


Soulmate Line

by girlskylark



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Attempted Fluff, Cupid Lance, M/M, Matchmaker Lance, Pining Lance (Voltron), Red String of Fate, Soulmates, Suffering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-30
Updated: 2017-09-08
Packaged: 2018-12-21 21:16:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 23,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11952789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlskylark/pseuds/girlskylark
Summary: Lance moves from a small town where everyone's soulmate lines branch outwards. He never expected his matchmaking abilities to work, especially with there being 7.5 billion people in the world, but moving to university has increased the chances of success more than he anticipated. With Pidge and Hunk's help, he starts a business pairing naïve college students together if their lines connect, and by the time Shiro's cousin, Keith, comes to tour the campus, he already has a reputation.So how can Lance explain who Keith's soulmate is when their lines connect, and yet they're total strangers to one another?— — —A fic to help Caro cheer up BECAUSE SHE NEEDS TO. The fate of the world depends on it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thesearchingastronaut](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesearchingastronaut/gifts).



> I whipped this fic out of my ASS cuz it was necessary and also to help cheer [Caro](http://thesearchingastronaut.tumblr.com/) up. You're one kickass motherfricker and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
> 
> Also this isn't edited at all so sorry for any typos XD

Moving out of his languid, slow life in his hometown was something Lance figured he’d regret, but for now, he marveled in the new scenery. A change of space was something he needed to get out of the clusterfuck of his life. There wasn’t anything _terrible_ about living at home, it just… got crowded. He wasn’t even a middle child and he was stir-crazy with the mindset of one. 

Not enough attention. Not enough love. Not enough people to talk to. 

He was starting to feel and _sound_ desperate. He hated it. 

But… that seemed to be the general attitude of freshmen in college around here.

After the disaster of moving in—in which the elevator crashed a total of three times within the last two days—he was ready to sit and observe for… an hour or two. So perhaps he spent a little too long loitering around the garden area in the center of the campus, but who wouldn’t? Especially if they could see what he saw.

The shimmering, almost holographic red lines webbed out around him, from the varying heights of the buildings, to the plain of grass at his eye level. The threads were almost indistinguishable unless he sat still enough to notice them, and to train his eye to focus. It was almost like… adjusting his vision to look beyond his normal boundaries. And sure, there were tons of people out there who could use magic, but his was a different kind. 

His parents almost didn’t expect his magic to show until a trip to the eye doctor’s told them that not only was his vision impaired, but it was also enhanced with magic. It channeled emotions on a visual landscape between the fabric of existence—connecting one person to another. Lance could see the line connecting perfect pairs of two.

“So… you can see soulmates?” his roommate, Hunk, asked. Lance nearly forgot that they were there for studying—not people watching.

“Yeah,” Lance said, squinting as he searched for the ends of peoples threads. He rarely ever found them. It always depressed him to see lines fall through the ground—cutting through to some other continent where their soulmate was. 

“Can you see mine?” Hunk asked, leaning over the table to grin hopefully at Lance.

Lance had to refocus his vision to see the slim, shimmering line protruding from Hunk’s chest. Lance followed it past his own, and through the courtyard. “Whoever they are, they’re definitely on this continent. Congrats,” he laughed, turning back to where Hunk scowled at him. “What?”

“That’s not helpful.”

“I didn’t say I was _gonna_ be helpful!” Lance laughed, leaning back in his chair as Hunk moaned and flopped over his laptop keyboard. “I _told you_. It’s just, like, lil’ wires that connect people. I can’t actually _see_ who it’s connected to.”

“That’s not very _helpful_ …” Hunk whined, his heavy, frizzy bun the only thing Lance could see beyond his laptop screen. Eventually, Hunk popped back up with a huff. “I just… I think that’s so cool, you know? It’s not like… bullshit physical magic we see all the time.”

“I can’t exactly _prove it_ , though, which kinda sucks,” he sighed, propping his chin up on his hand. “I’ve only ever paired _one_ couple because they happened to be in the same town.”

“And?”

“They’re still dating. I paired them up in high school…” Lance sighed. He thought about them often, mainly because Shiro used to be the swim coach assistant and they still kept in touch. That was… five years ago, before Shiro graduated high school and flew off to attend the same university as his girlfriend, Allura. They weren’t exactly looking to break the bank on a wedding so early on in life, especially with the amount of college debt they’d be in after all was said and done.

Hunk seemed to lose interest and went back to work on his computer. Lance trained his eyes on a girl passing them, and it must have been complete coincidence that Lance decided to look up at that exact moment to catch the shine against her thread reaching—

—An end.

“Holy shit,” he gasped, practically lunging out of his chair. 

His feet were moving before he could stop them. Hunk cried out from the table as Lance shouted, “Hey! Miss—hang on!” The girl stuttered to a halt, frantically turning back to him. Her hair was long and braided, and Lance was momentarily floored by her _sheer beauty_. Holy _shit_ , he was not prepared for this. 

“What? What is it? Did I drop something?” she asked frantically, looking around her feet when Lance didn’t hesitate twice in grabbing her by the arm. “Hey—!”

“Just trust me for a second,” he said, hurrying past his table where Hunk was still stuttering about what the hell was going on.

The girl squeaked as they wove through the crowd of students on the main drag of the courtyard. Lance loosened his grip as he caught sight of the thread again, connecting to the heavy black fabric of another girl’s hoodie. 

“Excuse me!” he shouted, and pretty much everyone had their eyes on the two unlikely individuals holding hands. The longhaired girl’s dark skin flushed, and she looked about ready to scram. 

Thankfully, though, the girl in the black hoodie turned around, and Lance gestured immediately to her. Her hair was dyed blue, dark eyes wide and quite honestly horrified at the attention. 

“I swear I’m not insane,” he promised, drawing the two of them together. _Man_ , he really should have strategized this, but even his first and last paring went as disjointed as this. He wasn’t exactly _practiced_. 

“What’s this about?” the blue-haired girl demanded, “Let her go—”

Lance grabbed her by the hand and fit the girls together, clasping their hands together. “I see soulmate lines,” he started, reassuring himself that the thread was still connecting them. It glimmered silver. “Your lines connect, so I just—I figured you two might want to meet. Or something.”

“Our— _what?_ ” they blurted at once. The blue-haired girl went positively red, and bit back a smile as the other girl giggled. 

“My name’s Lance,” he started, grinning as the three of them laughed. “What are… your names?”

“Ezor,” the longhaired girl said, biting her lip as she looked between Lance and her… soulmate. _That sounds nice, doesn’t it?_ Lance thought to himself, giddy with the adrenaline of paring them together.

They had a bit of a crowd watching them since the moment Lance shouted to the girl who said, “Acxa. My name’s Acxa.”

“Nice to meet you,” Ezor said, and promptly shook her hand. Lance let go, clasping his hands together. “Do you… have a number or something? So I can call you sometime?”

“Uh—yeah! Yeah, hang on.” Acxa twisted her bag around and let go of Ezor’s hand to pull out her phone. They swapped numbers before Ezor turned to Lance, who hadn’t realized he was standing there like an idiot watching _soulmates_ talk for the first time. 

“Can I get your number too? So I can tell you how all this goes?” she asked, and Lance stammered for a moment before accepting the phone to type in his number. 

They talked for a few minutes longer until people started coming up and asking Lance about the magic he used to see the soulmate lines. Acxa was on her way to class at the start of the fiasco, so she hurried off, still blushing like mad as she hurried up the steps of the courtyard and disappeared around the corner of a building. Lance was flustered by the attention, but that was why he was here, wasn’t it? To have the attention he always wanted? 

Whatever the case, Lance was riddled with new phone numbers by the time he returned to his table with Hunk. Someone from the group of bystanders came over, and it was at that time Lance met a total tech wizard that made just about anything possible. They weren’t expecting anyone to join them until the sound of a metal chair screeched across the concrete and landed on the free side of their table fit for three.

Lance jumped a little, still recovering from the adrenaline high, and looked to a small little thing with oversized glasses. 

“Hey,” they said, dropping into the chair and swinging their backpack to the floor in front of them. “I just—I saw what you did over there. I thought it was pretty cool.”

“Uh… thanks? It was nothing?” Lance said, and Hunk snorted, rolling his eyes.

“This is Pidge,” Hunk said, pointing to the person who joined them. “We sat next to each other during one of the orientation lectures.”

“So you’re one of the computer science nerds,” Lance commented, feeling slightly more oriented when he realized this wasn’t a complete stranger at all.

“Yeah. And I have a proposal for you,” they said, adjusting their glasses. “I mean, this campus is like a city. It _is_ a city, let’s be real. And I was thinking, like… that’s more people who could wind up as soulmates, right?”

“Right…” Lance drawled, squinting at Pidge.

“And I’m not saying I’m super into the ‘soulmate’ idea, but—what if you, like, made a business out of it? And I’d help you figure out the logistics of it, and how people would pay you, and your website and stuff. People would come to you and I don’t really know exactly how your magic works, but if you could… like, pair them up with their soulmates if they’re on campus?” they suggested, looking everywhere but Lance until their proposal was made.

“I feel like that would be a lot of wasted money,” he confessed with a frown. “The chances that their soulmate isn’t on campus is _huge_.”

“Then they don’t pay unless their soulmate is found,” they suggested.

“Then that’s a _lot_ of wasted time,” Hunk said. “But I mean, what if the price isn’t that huge? Like, five dollars to follow the line to the edge of the campus, if they’re _past_ the edge of the campus? I mean, think about how many people pay money to go to palm readers and shit!”

“At least they’re _accurate_ ,” Lance said. “And they _get something_ out of it.”

“Trust me, um, what’s your name?” Pidge asked.

“Lance.”

“Trust me, Lance, you’d be surprised by how many people would want in on this,” they insisted. “We’ll use Hunk as an experiment, and I’ll get one of my guys to post an article about the whole thing that just happened in the school newspaper, and people will be _on this_ within a week.”

“… Your guys…?” Lance said.

“They have connections,” Hunk said.

“Ah,” he hummed, even though that didn’t help at all.

“So do we got a deal?” Pidge said, holding their hand out. Lance glared at it, and then up at Pidge’s expectant gaze. _What’s the harm in it?_ he thought to himself, and clasped hands with Pidge. 

 

 

Pidge had a working website up within the week, an article in the newspaper, and an audience flocking in to get information about Lance’s accidental business. Secretly, he was thrilled that people were so interested in his magic. After his success with Shiro and Allura, kids all over his high school started to ask him about his magic, and the threads, and whether or not their soulmate was the person they were crushing on. It never was. Eventually kids got the hint that their soulmates were more or less impossible to find, and people grew tired of listening to Lance stammer out, “No—I don’t know who your soulmate is. I can’t find them for you.” 

So secretly, he was afraid all of this would fail miserably. 

But by the end of the week, after the article came out—with quotes from both Acxa and Ezor—the girls met up with him at a coffee shop off campus to talk about it. 

“I mean, whatever happens, at least you had fun trying, right?” Ezor said, and Lance shrugged over his mug of chai with a sigh. Ezor looked over at Acxa, who was slouched back in the booth beside her. Acxa shrugged helplessly, and Ezor gave a shake of her head. 

“It’s normal to feel anxious about stuff like this,” Acxa offered, voice quiet as she glanced out at the rest of the coffee shop. “You never know if it’s gonna fail miserably…”

“ _Acxa_.”

“Or be a complete success,” she finished, smirking at Ezor. The two of them laughed a little before Acxa turned to Lance and said, “Honestly. Don’t sweat it. You have bigger things to worry about than finding other peoples’ soulmates. Like your school work and shit.”

“That’s what Hunk keeps telling me. We tested out the campus-radius thing the other day and we didn’t find the end of his thread,” Lance confessed. “Pidge is basically working on a thesis project at this point. I think they want to turn my magic into a computer program that covers the entire world.”

“Jesus,” Ezor gasped. “That sounds… impossible.”

“I know! But apparently Pidge is a genius and has ‘connections’ and claims to not be interested in this at all,” Lance explained, scratching at his brow. “And on top of it! I find it really bizarre because Pidge’s thread is basically nonexistent. It’s, like, not even there. We both have to be as still as goddamn statues to see it.”

“Interesting,” Acxa hummed. “Why do you think that is?”

“Maybe their soulmate is dying,” Ezor gasped, and earned a nudge in the arm from Acxa. “What! I’m just being realistic.”

“That’s what Pidge thinks it is anyways,” he confessed, rubbing his hands over his tired eyes. “But I’m sure it’ll be fine. Everything’ll be fine.”

The three of them left the coffee shop not long after, and Lance watched Acxa and Ezor cruise off on their moped back to campus. They hesitated on the curb, asking if Lance was all right walking back alone. He said he was, and spent the entire walk thinking, and thinking, and _thinking_ about all the shit that could go wrong.

None of it went _totally_ wrong. 

He got his first call almost immediately after the website launch, and met up with a group of freshmen college students who had apparently witnessed the pairing. They walked across campus for each of them until Lance recognized one of the threads was shifting depending on how far they walked on campus. They skipped straight to her thread, and were practically running with the certainty Lance had that her soulmate was on campus. 

He was so sure of it that they crossed the campus border and straight into the random conglomeration of off campus housing. They trekked the sidewalks together like they were navigating by compass until the thread led directly to the living room of someone’s house. 

The girl looked to Lance and asked, “So this is it?”

“Yeah. Do you… want me to go up with you?” he asked, and she nodded quickly, smiling giddily at her friends as the two of them walked up to the front door.

As they waited for an answer to the knock, the girl said, “Thanks for helping me out.”

“I wouldn’t thank me yet,” he said.

“But I trust you. I think this is gonna work out,” she insisted, and right then the door opened. 

The girl’s silver thread moved with the man who walked across the foyer to go into another room as his roommate asked, “Uh… can I help you?”

“Who’s that right there?” Lance asked, pointing past him to the guy who just left to the other room.

That was Lance’s third success. 

The semester went on like this. Every three weeks after a pairing, Pidge got in contact with the couple and photographed the success for the website. Articles started going up across campus about Lance’s unique magic that he was sharing with the campus. Three more successes later led to Lance being dubbed the Campus Cupid, which he honestly thought was a bit extra, but Hunk thought it was cute.

“You’re Cupid, Lance,” Hunk cooed from the other loft where Lance was groaning about the title of the latest article. 

“Stop calling me that…”

“Campus Cupid, Campus Cupid, Campus Cu— _ow!_ ” Hunk shrieked after having flung his leg in the air and promptly kicked the _solid concrete ceiling_. Lance gasped, sitting up as Hunk screamed like he was being murdered. He nearly toppled straight off his loft trying to grab the first aid kit.

Lance was wrapping gauze around Hunk’s skinned shin when his phone started going off. He blindly reached for it on the floor as Hunk whimpered about how tight the bandages were. He nudged his glasses up with his shoulder as he said, “Hello, this is the Soulmate Line, Lance speaking.”

“Soulmate Line, huh?” Lance gasped, dropping everything except his phone. 

“Shiro! Holy shit, what’s up?” he demanded, jumping to his feet as his old swim instructor laughed on the other line. Hunk perked up at the name, and watched as Lance paced the room. “How’s school? How’s Allura?”

“Allura’s fine,” Shiro laughed, deep voice _mesmerizing_ just as always. Lance would be lying if he said he wasn’t still crushing _big time_ on Shiro. Seeing that man nearly-shirtless every goddamn day the week was the recipe for every crush on the swim team. “And classes are… crippling. What about you? How’s your semester been?”

“Fine! Fine. Just… busy. As expected,” Lance confessed, pressing his hand to his cheek to calm to heat there. “But, ah, what’s up? Why are you calling?”

“Straight to the point, huh? Well, I just wanted to let you know that I’m visiting your school next weekend. My cousin’s considering transferring for next semester and so we’re touring the campus. Not _officially_ , but—well, you know what I mean.”

“That’s exciting,” Lance said, looking over at Hunk’s expectant face as he said, “So you’re coming to SoCal?”

Hunk all but jumped up in excitement. Lance talked about Shiro far too often considering that they weren’t _best friends_ or anything. Lance really had no reason to rant about Shiro’s… perfect… face… _Shit._

“Yeah. I was actually wondering if you wanted to lead the whole tour? We’d treat you to lunch or something.”

“Yes. I am _always_ down for free food,” he said.

“Perfect! So… I’ll text you when we get there next Friday. Probably late morning. Sound good?”

“Sounds _great_. I’ll see you then.”

 

 

Lance was almost too excited to function during his last class on Friday. Forget about notes—he had a lot of emotional training to go through to prevent himself from fawning over Shiro’s gorgeous bod all weekend. Hunk wasn’t exactly helpful in dissuading Lance from throwing himself at Shiro, especially after all the picture evidence Lance gave him of discrete, blurry snapchats he used to take in high school.

“Climb that man like a tree or else we aren’t friends anymore,” Hunk said.

“Shiro _literally_ has a soulmate, Hunk. I can’t even exaggerate that point,” Lance insisted. “She would _murder me_ if I climbed Shiro like a tree.”

“I’ll be there to pick up your pieces,” Pidge said, scrolling through their phone on the walk across campus. They passed the main drag where the Soulmate Line all started, and continued across the center of the garden area as Pidge said, “I’ll harvest your body parts if I have to to make this goddamn program work.”

“Jesus,” Lance said, shuddering. “Now I’m _definitely_ not climbing Shiro like a tree.”

“It’s for the greater good,” they insisted.

“I feel like Pidge will just use your magic for pure evil,” Hunk confessed. “I wouldn’t trust them as far as I could toss ‘em.”

“Thanks Hunk. For being my friend forever and always,” Pidge droned.

“For whatever reason that sounded like a threat to me,” Lance admitted, frowning at Pidge, who glared up at him past the rim of their glasses. He felt his entire being freeze in terror.

They accompanied Lance to the main building where he could already spy Shiro’s tall, buff figure in the distance, standing outside his car. It really wasn’t _Shiro_ who was the most notable, but really it was Allura’s pure white hair tugged into a half-braid that let the rest of her hair poof out in a cloud of white. Lance hurried down the steps to the parking lot where they stood loitering around the trunk of their rental car, and shouted, “Shiro! Allura!”

They turned, just in time to collide with one of Lance’s massive bearhugs. He gathered them up in a group hug, laughing as Allura said, “Lance! Nice to see you again! How’s the semester treating you?”

“Good, I guess. Can’t complain _too_ much,” he said, pulling back to straighten out his shirt, looking between the couple that looked as though they flew straight out of a Greek mythology tale. Shiro was an absolute _god_ and Allura was an absolute _goddess_ , which left—

—Lance to categorize Shiro’s cousin, who stood farther back, watching the interaction play out. 

“Oh—Lance, this is Keith. Keith, you know Lance,” Shiro said, gesturing between the two of them. _Oh, a cue for a handshake,_ Lance thought, reaching out to Keith, who did the same.

“More or less,” Keith said, grayish eyes studying Lance up and down. His fingers where lithe and smooth, pale just like every other part of him that wasn’t concealed in those heavy black sweatshirts Lance saw Acxa wearing more often than not. His hair was jet black like his cousin’s, and Lance could see the similarities in their sharp eyes, flat noses, and perfect, straight smiles—even… if Keith didn’t smile all that much yet.

Keith’s attention diverted over to where Pidge and Hunk were approaching. Lance blinked fast and glanced over at them, and back at Shiro. “Uh… Shiro! This is my roommate Hunk, and our friend Pidge.”

“Nice to meet you,” he said, and after shaking hands with Hunk, Hunk practically fanned himself from where Lance migrated towards him, the two of them snickering to one another. 

“We just came to walk Lance over,” Pidge said. “Hunk, c’mon big guy.”

“Aw… I don’t _wanna_ study…” he whined.

“Your term grade says otherwise,” they insisted, grabbing him by the arm and starting to walk off. “It was nice meeting you guys!”

“We’ll see you later, I guess,” Allura said, giggling as they watched Pidge and Hunk meander back up the steps. “They seem lovely.”

“They are,” Lance admitted, smiling at them, and feeling his ears heat up at the fact that Keith’s eyes were still on him. 

“Pidge is the one that helped you with that website, right?” Shiro asked, and Lance nodded, ducking his head as he suggested they start walking. As the four of them headed for the main building, Shiro said, “I think it’s cool that you’re using your magic for other people.”

“I’m not sure why _else_ I would use it,” he confessed with a nervous laugh.

“So you see peoples’ soulmates?” Keith’s voice sounded, slightly behind him. Lance moved to the side, falling into step with Shiro’s cousin. Keith turned a bit pink in the cheeks, reaching up to scratch the back of his head. “Shiro… told me about how you set him and Allura up.”

“Oh,” Lance said, and laughed a little. “It was just coincidence. I didn’t think soulmates tended to end up in the same town. But it seems more common to find your soulmate in college. I’ve paired up… eight now? I think?”

“That’s impressive,” Allura said. “I was reading the articles on your website during the drive over here.”

“You were!” Lance squeaked, clasping a hand over his mouth as Allura laughed, nudging Shiro in the arm. “Don’t read that stuff! God, it makes me feel like a goddamn… one of those _advice columns_ you find in the _newspaper_!”

“You should start one, Lance,” Shiro joked.

“No way!”

“So you see the soulmate lines all the time?” Keith asked, and Lance shrugged. “Can you see mine?”

“Sure, I can try,” he said, and switching focus was becoming far easier than before Pidge started his Soulmate Line.

The silver line jutted out from Keith’s upper arm, and Lance followed it past himself to—

—It disappeared. 

Lance frowned, looking back to the line linking Allura and Shiro together. It was the satisfying silver line that the red turned to when soulmates were at a closer range. Lance felt the adrenaline spike again, excited that he found yet another silver line, but it wasn’t something to go anywhere other than _through_ Lance—

He was suddenly spiraling like a dog chasing his tail, which caused them to fall back a few paces from Allura and Shiro until Lance was able to gain control of his scramble of thoughts. Sure, he saw his own line plenty of times—it was always East that it never really processed that it _moved_ at all until it was following Keith wherever they went. 

Keith stood there, waiting for an answer as Lance pushed his fingers against the bridge of his glasses and cleared his throat. _You can’t seriously tell someone you just met that you’re their soulmate_ , Lance thought, clearing his throat as he prepared an answer at random.

“It—Sometimes it’s hard to… um, focus. On the threads, I mean,” he confessed. _It’s not a total lie_ , he told himself, hoping Keith couldn’t tell how panicked his eyes were when they met gazes, and Keith shrugged, starting to walk off again and taking his silver thread with him.

_Jesus fucking Christ_ , Lance thought, clutching at his chest where it was starting to hurt from how loud his heart was screaming at him through it. 

Keith caught up with his cousin and glanced back momentarily to see if Lance was coming. His feet stuttered back into motion, but he couldn’t stop staring at Keith for the life of him. _Is this what it feels like being paired up?_ he thought, realizing that he didn’t know a single thing about Keith. _Is this what it’s like being paired with a total stranger?_

Lance tried his best to channel his energy into talking about the campus he loved so much. He tried his best to ignore the people he met and knew and was approached by on the sidewalks they walked down, and wished his reputation would just _leave him alone_. He couldn’t stop thinking about _goddamn Keith_ and what he must think of Lance. _He must think I’m a partier or something or a social butterfly_ , he moaned internally. There wasn’t anything wrong with being a social butterfly, but that certainly wasn’t who _he_ was. Sure, he could talk someone’s ear off if he wanted, but he didn’t thrive off of party energy like a lot of college students did.

Taking money for finding soulmates suddenly felt cheap and ridiculous, and gaudy because he wore it on his sleeve the few times people came up to him and said things like, “Dude! I love your website!” “I keep up with your stories every week!” “ _Campus Cupid!_ How’s it goin’?”

Keith stood next to him all those times, curiously, and seeing that silver thread was all it took for Lance’s thoughts to shift dramatically from “Oh, this is just Shiro’s cousin” to “Holy shit look at how perfect my _goddamn soulmate is! Look at him!_ ” He wanted to slap himself every time for thinking it. He also wanted to slap himself every time for wanting people to know that he was completely taken by someone who didn’t know it yet.

Thankfully, the campus really _was_ a city, so he spent far more time than anticipated talking to Keith and walking next to him. Shiro and Allura were off in their own little world, always several paces ahead of them, so Lance was free to ask Keith any questions he wanted. 

“So… you live in Texas?” he asked.

“Uh, yeah. San Antonio, actually. My parents own a tech company there,” he said.

“Tech company?”

“Coding softwares and stuff. They make antivirus softwares—it’s why I’m majoring in computer engineering so I can work for them in the future,” he explained. 

“My two friends—the ones you met earlier—are into computers and stuff. If you… end up going here, I bet they could introduce you to a bunch of computer nerds.” _God, now you’re insinuating he’s a nerd_ , Lance moaned internally, regretting everything and life itself as he was about to stammer out some excuse to take the subject away from that.

Instead, though, Keith laughed a little and said, “Yeah, that’d be cool. I’m kind of introverted, so it’s hard going out and making friends. My social life at my other school is basically… nonexistent.”

“Oh—well, if you enroll here you’ll have me. A-And Hunk and Pidge. And everyone they introduce you to, so your social life would definitely _not_ be nonexistent here,” he said quickly, clutching at his hair as he realized how fucking suggestive that was. “ _You’ll have me”—stop being such a sap_.

They got as far as the engineering buildings and Lance had been to the computer science building enough times to know the layout, even if it wasn’t his major. He showed them the best study spots where he often met up with Hunk and Pidge, and since all the computer labs were locked, they merely peered in through the window of a class that was still going on before they were spotted by the professor talking at the front of the class. Lance yelped and hurried off with Keith giggling behind him. 

They lost Allura and Shiro somewhere on the first level—they got distracted by the vending machines—so Lance was acutely aware that it was just the two of them. Walking around. Alone. With no one to… interrupt them.

“I can’t stop thinking about something,” Keith confessed as they approached the stairwell that would take them back down. “About my soulmate line. I mean, it’s probably ridiculous and I’m not really concerned about it, but… do you think you could find it now?” 

_Convenient that you didn’t have to bring it up_ , Lance thought to himself. _Now you can’t exactly_ avoid _it._

“O-Oh,” Lance stammered, clutching his hands together over his stomach as he looked down at them, and cleared his throat. “I—It’s actually not that hard to see your’s.”

“Oh, cool. I was kind of afraid you didn’t tell me because I didn’t _have_ one,” he confessed. “ _That_ would be some depressing news. Though, with there being, what? seven billion people on the planet? Chances of meeting a person’s soulmate is pretty slim.”

“I have a theory that a lot of it has to do with location, too,” Lance confessed. _Stop dragging this out, you idiot_. “I think the threads _know_ that at some point you’ll come in contact with them, or be in the same city as them. So you could have a dozen different soulmates, but some are closer than others and so the thread picks them.”

“Oh,” Keith hummed, starting for the stairs. 

_Don’t_ — 

“And… I think the soulmate lines knew you were gonna come here,” Lance said, cursing himself with every word of it. 

Keith hesitated at the stairs, and laughed a little, saying, “So, what? So you’re saying my… soulmate or whatever is at this school? That’s a killer incentive to get me to go to this university.”

Lance stared helplessly as Keith turned back to the stairs and started down them, not even waiting for Lance to follow. But of course, Lance did, and each step was yet another mental kick to his rationality. _Just—fucking-_ grow a pair _and tell him_.

“I was serious, though,” Lance continued as they reached the third floor of the building. “I just—I think it’s jarring being told your soulmate is a complete stranger.”

“Yeah, I guess it helped that Allura and Shiro sort of new each other already. Honestly, Shiro was crushing _hardcore_ on Allura, and you pairing them together was just destiny—if you believe in that sort of thing,” he said.

“But… don’t you want to know who it is?”

“I don’t know. I guess if I end up going here, I’ll probably meet him sometime,” Keith said, and Lance tried not to lose his shit when Keith confessed to liking a ‘him’. _One less thing to worry about_ , he thought to himself. _And one more reason to just. Fucking. Tell. Him._

“But he’s right here,” Lance said. He totally thought he was being smooth until he practically tripped at the way Keith whipped around to face him as he stumbled down the last step, and managed a smile that looked more like a grimace.

Keith looked at him, his eyes, and skimmed his attention down and up, back to Lance’s most-likely beet red face.

“H—You— _What?_ ” Keith blurted out.

Lance swallowed hard, steadying himself on the railing on that half-landing on the stairs. “I—Um—I didn’t want to freak you out. And Shiro and Allura where there and I didn’t—want—to see… presumptuous or whatever. I guess,” he confessed, putting his hands on his face then and looking away with a groan. “ _God_ , I’m so sorry. This is—awkward—”

“You’re my soulmate?” Keith asked, and Lance couldn’t look at him without dreading some look of complete disappointment. 

“I—”

“Lance—” They both started, and Lance immediately shut up at the tone Keith used. He tucked his hands against his chin, covering his mouth as he looked over at where Keith held himself back from touching him. 

They both hesitated, and Lance gestured for Keith to go first, shoulders still bunched up to his ears like he was preparing to curl in on himself until he imploded. 

“Lance,” Keith started, closing his eyes for a moment to gather his thoughts back, “ever since you paired Allura and Shiro up, and I met Allura—I just—I think it’s so cool that you can see peoples’ soulmate lines. And… the fact that you’re helping _other people_ find their soulmates is _really_ fucking cool.”

Lance felt the heat in his face swell up again. “It was Pidge’s idea…” he said quietly.

“Well— _regardless_ , I don’t think it’s presumptuous,” Keith said, and when Lance looked over at him, his face was red and Lance felt like kissing every bit of it. “And… there are definitely worse people to be soulmates with.”

“Really?” Lance squeaked, and Keith laughed, saying, “Yeah, _really_. As if Shiro would befriend a serial killer or something.”

They both laughed, and with the tension gone, Lance figured it might have been presumptuous, but he couldn’t help himself from flinging his arms around Keith’s neck, still laughing. His insides were a giddy, vibrating mess the second Keith wrapped his arms around his torso and held him back. 

They stood there for a few more seconds until Lance said, “Not to pressure you or anything, but… I _really_ hope you decide to enroll here. I want to get to know you better.”

Keith released a breathy laugh, tucking his nose into Lance’s neck and said, “Yeah, I wan’t to get to know you better too.”

That was all Lance could really ask for, considering he never expected to find his soulmate at all.

 


	2. when the opportunity arises

The thing about having a semi-popular website (in terms of people on campus) meant that… it would be difficult for Lance to keep this news under wraps. It meant hiding the information from Pidge, which would require hiding the information from Hunk, who’s loud mouth wouldn’t be able to shut up about it until the end of time.

He groaned internally as he pretended that this day was just another normal day in the life of Lance McClain. The second they were back to the rental car, Lance and Keith dropped into the back seat and simultaneously looked at one another. _Don’t tell Shiro and Allura_ , they vowed before leaving the third floor of the engineering building. _We’d never live it down_.

Still, though, the entire drive to the restaurant that afternoon was spent trying to focus on giving Shiro directions while also staring at Keith, who couldn’t stop looking at him. It took the entire walk to the car for Keith to decide that staring at Lance wasn’t something he should be ashamed of—at least, Lance _assumed_ this was the reason. He couldn’t think of any other reason why _he_ was no longer embarrassed to just sit there, leaning against the middle armrest, and watch the way Keith’s grey eyes flitted over his expression.

“So Keith,” Allura asked later as they settled into their spots at the restaurant table. “What’d you think of the school?”

“It was good,” he said.

“Thinking about coming here?” Lance asked, laughing until he saw the way Keith pulled at the longer strands of his black hair.

“We’re still visiting Berkeley and Stanford this week,” Shiro told Lance.

“Those seem kind of snooty,” he said. Internally he reminded himself of the distance from here to Berkeley and Stanford. _Six hour car ride_. And they were _in_ the same state as Lance. Why did California have to be so stupidly large?

“They have really good computer engineering programs,” Keith confessed. “But I’m not really interested in hanging around snobby rich kids.”

“All of the colleges we toured in New York were like that,” Allura told Lance. “Snobby rich kids.”

“Not _all_ of them,” Keith remarked. “But even _with_ my SAT scores I still don’t think I could realistically get into them.”

“Yes you could, Keith,” his cousin sighed, and gave him a look from across the table that told him to can it. Keith crossed his arms, scowling at Shiro until the waiter came by to ask if they needed any beverages.

Allura was one for telling stories, and so the majority of the meal was spent listening to her ridiculous stories at her previous internships, in her classes, _awful_ roommate scenarios. She had an animated way of talking that always mesmerized Lance, but it couldn’t entire shed the news that this school wasn’t even Keith’s first choice. If Keith was able to afford going to such prestigious universities… then Lance’s school was a low priority.

Near the end of the meal, Lance excused himself to go to the restroom. Keith scooted out of the booth, and as he stood up, he stammered out, “I… should probably use the bathroom too. So I don’t have to bother you guys to stop on the ride up.”

“Good idea! I’ll go too—Shiro, guard the table,” Allura demanded, and Lance laughed at Shiro’s reaction to the command.

The three of them meandered across the dining room before disappearing behind their designated bathroom doors. Keith skimmed by Lance, stepping in front of him and blocking his path to the urinals.

“Lance, I—” he started, his guilty expression stopping Lance in his tracks. Keith cleared his throat and said, “I know we aren’t dating or anything and I don’t expect us to yet, but… I don’t want whatever school I choose to reflect on… whatever we could be. Does that make sense?”

“I wouldn’t want you to choose this school just because I’m going here,” Lance reiterated, and Keith’s shoulders slackened, relieved. “You should go wherever you think is best for your education. Soulmate or not, it’s idiotic to decide your school based on where your significant other is going.”

“And you’re… okay with that?” Keith said.

“Well—like you said, we aren’t _dating_ yet.” Lance would have lied if he said he wasn’t relieved to say that out loud, and the way Keith smiled told Lance that he felt the same way. They were still two strangers trying to figure shit out when it was impossible to tell what the next step of this soulmate line was. “I shouldn’t have a decision in what you do,” he finished.

Keith nodded, tucking his hands against his chest in a way that seemed to make him appear smaller. A toilet flushed across the bathroom, and they both flinched at the sound. They stepped to the side as a man walked out and washed his hands. Keith’s eyes were down, studying Lance’s chest until the man was gone.

“I actually have to go to the bathroom now,” Lance whispered.

“Oh! Right, sorry!” Keith blurted out, scrambling for the door.

Lance laughed even after Keith disappeared out of the restroom. Afterwards, as Lance was washing his hands, he smiled to himself, trying not to laugh again.

Allura and Shiro paid for the meal, which Lance was eternally grateful for. The dining hall food was getting bland, and he was in dire need of a diet change. They drove him back to his dorm where Allura practically lunged out of her seat to hug Lance, which led to Shiro getting out and joining the group hug. Keith slowly emerged from his side of the car, and as Lance came over, he held up his phone.

“I was… just gonna ask for your number,” he said, the tips of his ears going red as Lance smiled and took his phone.

He typed in his contact name as “Lance ;)” with his last name as “Future Bae” followed by his number below. He locked the phone and handed it back, saying, “Text me or something.”

“Yeah. Will do,” Keith said, looking down at his blank phone screen and back up at Lance. Lance offered another smile he hoped was killer before turning and hopping up onto the sidewalk. He glanced back and watched the car move out just to see the look on Keith’s face when he opened his phone again, and looked accusingly at him through the window. He pressed his phone to the window and next to it, he held up his middle finger.

Lance threw his head back laughing, and nearly tripped up the stairs to the dorm because he was giggling so hard.

  


  


The remainder of the day consisted of equal parts homework and hoping Keith would _just fucking text him already_.

“You seem anxious,” Hunk commented from the futon. Lance flopped over on the floor with a groan.

“It’s probably the anxiety,” Lance said.

“It be like that sometimes.”

“I met a cute guy today,” he confessed, glancing over at where Hunk raised an eyebrow. “I gave him my number and I’m waiting for him to text me.”

“Ah… I see now…” Hunk hummed. He leant back, propping his arm over the back of the futon as he watched Lance stare at the ceiling.

He swallowed hard, tipping his head to the side to look Hunk. “Who is this mysterious boy you speak of?” Hunk asked, combing a hand through his hair as Lance sighed.

“Shiro’s cousin. I gave him a tour around campus and stuff. We agreed that we both have an aesthetic attraction to each other but we don’t know each other real well. So he’s supposed to _text me_ so we can _get to know each other_.”

“What an ass. Why doesn’t he just call you already?”

“I _know_!” Lance groaned, flinging himself to the side and landing face-first in the carpet. He always regretted that decision, but his dramatics prompted it more often than not. Who _knows_ what people did on that carpet in years past? “He’s, like, a softer version of Shiro and I can _totally_ see him wearing man buns.”

“Like me?” Hunk asked, framing his face with his hands.

“No because you have a lot of curls, you know.”

“I do have a lot of curls.”

“You’re, like, a lion. Your hair is a mane.”

“It is a mane.”

“I love it.”

“I love _you_ ,” Hunk said, and Lance sat up to touch a hand to his heart, completely flattered.

The wait continued on for hours. Lance joined Hunk on the futon, and they lounged together until the light faded from outside, and they left to get dinner. The dining hall was nearly empty considering it was thirty minutes until close, so they meandered down the bar of food and back without interruptions. Despite all the choices, Lance wound up with a bowl of cereal for starters and claimed their spot by the window.

Hunk joined a minute later, and scowled at Lance’s choices. “Cereal? Really?”

“What? I’m bored of salad and shit.”

“Yeah, but that’s basically pure sugar. Get something healthier, okay?” he pleaded, and pouted his lips until Lance caved and wandered back to the food bar, moaning and groaning until he had to scoop soup into a bowl and head back.

Lance barely shoved two mouthfuls in before his phone buzzed in his pocket. He was nearly too excited to realize that it kept buzzing and buzzing until he saw Keith’s name over the “ANSWER CALL” button.

“He’s calling me! He’s calling me, holy shit—”

“Well, _answer it!_ ”

“I’m awful on the phone!”

“You literally call me all the time—”

“ _Yeah_ , cuz it’s easier to give instructions that way!” Lance whined, frantically hitting the answer button before Keith’s name would disappear.

All of his emotions bundled up in the tension of his throat, closing it up and making it nearly impossible to breathe when he was on the line with Keith and staring at Hunk across the table. A second passed before he heard a laugh on the other end of the phone that was satisfyingly familiar. Lance relaxed, letting out a thrilled laugh that had him slouching over the table like he was swooning.

“Hey there future-babe,” Lance said, and Hunk all but slapped his hand over his face.

Keith laughed and said, “ _Sorry I didn’t text sooner—_ ”

“It’s fine—”

“ _It just—Texting first stresses me out._ ”

“Why didn’t you say so?” he blurted out, sitting up straighter as Hunk recovered from Lance’s ridiculous greeting. He went back to eating, and Lance went back to swirling his spoon around his bowl.

“ _‘Cause we were basically leaving straight away and I didn’t want to waste time,_ ” he confessed. “ _But it’s just that—you can remember phone calls, but texting is more permanent. You know? Because you can go back and have_ evidence _of what you said. And I just have to think about what I write more than I do what I say…_ ”

“That’s fine,” Lance said. “We can talk whenever. I don’t mind.”

“ _Are you sure?_ ”

“Yeah! I mean, if texting makes you uncomfortable…”

“ _That just makes it sound like I’m technically inept—not being able to text. Or not liking texting,_ ” Keith sighed, and laughed as Lance did. “ _But I do like talking. To you._ ”

“Aw, babe—”

“Oh my God,” Hunk muttered across the table, and Lance giggled, reaching over to push him in the shoulder.

“ _I just had to wait for Shiro and Allura to decide to go to the pool. They’ll be gone for an hour or so. Do you have time to talk?_ ” Keith asked, and Lance looked sparingly at his meal before deciding that something needed to be sacrificed.

Food was _definitely_ a priority.

“I’m… actually eating right now. But I’ll call you straight back when I finish in a few minutes?” Lance suggested, straightening up and already preparing himself to rapid-fire eat every goddamn thing in these two bowls.

“ _Yeah, sounds good. I’ll talk to you then,_ ” Keith said, and hung up before Lance could say something ridiculous. His brain was already _way_ too far ahead of them and insisted on pulling in romantically gaudy phrases.

Lance locked his phone and set to work. He slurped the soup straight out of the bowl like a cup and shoveled Lucky Charms into his mouth as Hunk casually watched, picking at pieces of chicken and depositing them into his mouth in the time it took for Lance to finish half his bowl.

When he finished slurping up his cereal milk, Hunk said, “Don’t wait for me—call that boy!”

“I’m gonna! Hang on!” Lance said, slithering out of his chair and onto the floor where he picked up all of his dirty dishes and ran for it, shouting over his shoulder, “I’ll see ya up there, Hunk!”

Lance flew to the conveyer belt of dirty dishes and left his bowls behind. He was out the door, grabbing an extra apple—in case his appetite required it—and speeding to the elevator where he let his breath catch up to him. He looked between the floor number and his phone upwards of five times before he reached the eighth floor where he and Hunk existed on a daily basis. With his breath back, he opened up Keith’s contact and covered his face with his hand to prevent himself from smiling too much.

As he unlocked his door, he called Keith up and held his phone to his ear.

“ _That didn’t take very long,_ ” Keith’s voice came through, and it melted every bone in Lance’s body until he was a puddle on the floor of his dorm room.

“I’m a fast eater,” Lance said.

“Stop _—Don’t—make that sound_ sexual _,_ ” he whined, and Lance laughed maniacally on the floor of his dorm room. “ _What’s that even supposed to_ mean?”

“I don’t know. I’m just in a weird mood today,” he laughed. “So how was the drive? Where are you guys now?”

“ _We made it to San Francisco. You should’ve seen the way Allura_ drives _. I thought she was gonna murder us the second Shiro switched spots with her. She does the whole tactic where you find the fastest speeding car and drive behind them for however long they’re on the highway. Which means a lot of weaving through traffic._ ”

“Jesus.”

“ _Yeah. But we survived. And I’m not much a swimmer so I’m just hanging out in the hotel room. What about you?_ ”

“In my dorm room.”

“ _That’s it?_ ” Keith laughed.

“What? You wanna know what I’m wearing?”

“ _Oh my_ God _, Lance._ ” They both dissolved into laughter until Keith sighed, “ _I wish… we could’ve spent more time in San Diego. But we literally only have this weekend free to tour places on the West Coast so…_ ”

“That’s fine. So you’re touring Stanford and Berkeley tomorrow or something?”

“ _Yeah. But… I don’t know. I know Shiro wants me to think about it more but… I’d_ really _like to go to Altea University._ ”

“Why?” Lance asked, sitting up as he bit his lip into his dizzying grin.

“ _Well—_ you’re _heavily influencing it, for one_ ,” he said, his laugh light but dismissive as it turned into a groan. “ _But you were_ right _. I can’t decide where I want to go based on… something I never even_ considered _until I met you! I just figured my entire life was going to be university, working for my parents, and then wherever that takes me._

“ _I was prepared to be a workaholic until retirement and…_ ” Keith’s voice lowered until it was nonexistent, silently tugging at the way Lance’s own mind felt deep down. Sure, there was always the hope that he’d find his soulmate one day, but… he never stopped to consider the boyfriends before that, if any. He never thought he’d _have_ to get married and he didn’t necessarily _want to_.

“Yeah, I feel that,” Lance confessed quietly. “I wasn’t exactly planning on dating or whatever. I tried it once but it felt weird because I could always see their soulmate line going somewhere else…”

“ _So… this is good, right? We can focus on our own things and regroup after everything’s settled? Out of college and paying off student loans and shit?_ ” he suggested.

Lance couldn’t admit to how much it damaged the excitement that built up inside of him throughout the day. The idea that he could have a significant other through college felt _great_. They’d get an apartment together, they’d go on dates, eat pizza way too late at night watching movies, and commuting together to classes the next day. He never personally experienced “young love” before, and hoped that the wait for that was over.

Evidently not, considering Keith was proposal for plans _after_ the era of “young love” would close for both of them.

“Um… That makes sense? Yeah, I’m good with that,” he said.

“ _Really?_ ”

“Yeah, that’s fine. Besides, you should be going to the _best_ of the best. Like, fuckin’… go to Harvard or some shit.”

“ _I can’t make it into Harvard, Lance…_ ”

“Fine then Yale.”

“ _That’s not any better…_ ”

“Good then if they deny you, you had no expectations so no harm done!”

“ _Yeah, except for the stupidly expensive application fee…_ ” Keith groaned, and the line crackled as he shifted around and settled on the blankets of his hotel bed. “ _I regret not thinking about going out of state for college. I figured I’d like going to school close to home ‘cause I wouldn’t have to pay for housing. That really… limits a person’s social life._ ”

“I can see that. Some people in my classes commute. Because it _is_ cheaper! And if my family lived closer I probably would have commuted, too.”

“ _In the economical long run it’s definitely the way to go I guess,_ ” Keith confessed, though his voice was still quiet.

“But… you’re definitely transferring though, right? Will you have a roommate or something?”

“ _Probably. But I’m worried that whoever it is—I mean, what if they don’t have a roommate because they’re a terrible roommate? I’m worried that I’m gonna end up with a serial killer or something._ ”

“You won’t,” Lance laughed. “Trust me.”

“ _Whatever,_ ” Keith scoffed, _definitely_ not buying it. Lance rolled his eyes, and asked about when winter break started for him. They’d be in different states—New Mexico _may_ be neighbors with Texas, but it was still a haul getting from there to San Antonio. Keith asked the same of Lance, and so he confessed to still living in Santa Fe where he met Shiro and Allura.

Santa Fe was… definitely the vibe his parents carried around. Just like every other artist living there, his Ma made her own work and painting studio that Lance was barred away from when he was a toddler. Even now, it always felt like a sacred place to approach—the artsy shed in the back yard where his Ma kept all of her canvases and paints. It felt a little too surreal entering his Ma’s paint shed considering all the beautiful artwork that belonged in a museum instead of the walls of what was originally a garden shed.

They were talking about favorite shows and movies when Hunk walked in. The conversation of winter break naturally led to Keith confessing that he had every intention of binge watching a show or two over the break, so _naturally_ , Lance had to suggest a few. It went on like this, comparing and contrasting favorite shows.

In the midst of gushing over the finale of this-or-that show, Keith broke off at the sound of the hotel door lock being undone. Lance heard him curse under his breath before saying, “ _Shiro and Allura are back. I’ll try to call you tomorrow, let you know how touring goes?_ ”

“Yeah, sounds good.”

“ _Okay then. Bye._ ”

“ _Bye Keeeith_ ,” Lance cooed just to hear the way Keith’s groan turned into a half-growl before he shut off his phone. Lance dissolved against Hunk’s legs that were dangling off the futon from where he slouched against the cushions. He couldn’t move for a solid few minutes before deciding that he wouldn’t move at all if he didn’t get ready for bed _ASAP_.

So Lance got ready for bed that night after talking to Keith, and thus commenced every night from then continuing in the same fashion. Lance would call Keith and they’d recap, which eventually led to more of Lance’s friends being unofficially introduced, which led to stories about _those_ friends, and which would eventually lead to more stories throughout the following week before finals. They survived finals together despite minimal conversation up until that thirty minute window before sleep, and when winter break came, they were both too busy to talk.

Lance spent the break being pestered by his family and working, and Keith spent his break working insane hours that stretched until midnight and left him too exhausted to talk until the next day when he had to channel his energy back into his entry level work at his parents’ company. It wasn’t anything to brag about—barely even intern work—but it helped keep his mind off of other things, or so Lance suspected.

But then again, there were a lot of things for Lance to keep off his mind, and winter break tended to help with them. It didn’t help that his soulmate line email was filling up (yet again) with a queue of people booking his weekends.

“ _You shouldn’t keep checking it…_ ” Pidge moaned through the phone one night as Lance was collapsing after a shift at a local restaurant. He couldn’t stand his stuffy work pants, and so he was on his bed in boxers and was attempting to undo the buttons on his shirt with one hand. “ _That’ll just stress you out._ ”

“I thrive off of stress.”

“ _You cripple under it._ ”

“That is… well… I wish I could say I was strong enough to benchpress the stress I claim to thrive under… but that just isn’t the case. I am pretty tough though,” he insisted.

“ _That is_ very _true. You could benchpress me if you wanted—and not in a sexual way._ ”

“That… wasn’t even sexual. What do you mean by that? Is that a sexy term I haven’t heard of before?” he asked.

“ _Not that I know of. Though my sexy term thesaurus is very minimal at this time. Please try again when my libido decides to_ show the fuck up,” they said, and as Lance snickered against his pillow, they added, “ _But seriously. I hear you plan on benchpressing that nice Shiro look-a-like that you gallivanted across campus with_.”

“I do plan on benchpressing him,” Lance said. “I just don’t know when. It depends on whether or not Harvard accepts him and he’ll be all the way across the country. In that case, I’ll have to wait several years to benchpress him.”

“ _So this is a permanent endeavor?_ ” they asked.

“You could say that…” he said, trailing his fingers up and down his sheet before coming back to reality. “But the Soulmate Line. You were gonna tell me about website changes.”

“ _Not necessarily changes. Just an update on things. I’ve been checking your analytics and… it looks like you’re getting webpage views from different colleges now._ Specifically _colleges. Like, kids from Altea are putting it out on social media now that you have definitive soulmate match ups as evidence. They’re bein’ all lovey dovey on Facebook or whatever and Aunt Martha wants a piece of it. You know?_ ”

“Are you suggesting threesome soulmates?”

“ _Fuck no oh my God Lance get with the program. I’m saying that people are talking about you._ ”

“Oh. Well. People talk all the time—”

“ _No, I mean, you have interests from across the country. You even have hotspots in England now. Like, people are starting to realize soulmates are actually a thing because of you and now they want to find them._ ”

“What prompted this? I bet tons of people look at random websites from across the globe.”

“ _I got an email from some man in England, Lance. He wants to know if you’re the real deal._ ”

Lance sat up, half-dressed and gasping out loud. _England?_ Like, the place where Allura’s accent originated from? “No way. You’re joking. People don’t just—just—”

“ _Rich people_ do _exist. But the guy’s in England right now but he’s interested on writing a story about you if you_ are _the real deal—which we know you are. He comes back to San Francisco on the twentieth._ ”

“That’s—”

“ _A Thursday. He’s emailing me off of a certified Empire address. It’s that cool fashion magazine and they do articles on do-gooders and kick starters. Seems like he’s… legit. Like, I-don’t-think-you’d-get-murdered legit._ ”

“Oh. Wow, a-and he’s in… San Francisco?” Lance stammered out, reaching for his laptop to look up this _Empire_ , or whatever. It sounded vaguely familiar—perhaps it was mentioned in one of his lectures, but whatever the case, he was pulling it up on Google now and nearly fell off his bed when it processed in his brain that he was being contacted by someone who was involved with an aesthetic that rivaled the hybrid-collaboration of Patagonia and Vogue. If athletic fashion had a Vogue, this would be it. It had that unique, artistic edge to it that reminded Lance of every other business that came out of San Francisco—that seemed to be the difference of origins stemming from New York to San Fran.

“ _You only have one class on Fridays next semester, right?_ ”

“Uh, yeah—”

“ _Do you want me to forward this all to you so you can figure out flights? He says he’ll pay for everything that involves travel. And also anything that involves hotel expenses._ ”

Lance clutched at his hair, grinning like a maniac as he stammered out, “Uh, _yeah!_ Duh—oh my God, this is insane. This insane!”

“ _Don’t need to tell me twice_ ,” Pidge laughed. “ _I’ll set it up. But Lance—if_ Empire _is interested in you, then… this could be the start of something_ awesome _._ ”

They hung up shortly after that, and Lance couldn’t stop thinking about what that implied. He nestled into his covers, bundling up in the mound of blankets until he was nothing but a screaming, fluffy ball. His gradually increased pitched caught the attention of his sister, who was a door over.

Rosa marched over, and he could hear her footsteps thudding out in the hallway before they landed in front of his door. She shoved it open, the force of it causing her yellow sundress to swish forward as she hissed, “Could you _can it for once?_ ”

“I’m just excited,” he said.

“Yeah, well, I’m working on homework. Not _all of us_ are on break, you know,” she said. Lance stuck his tongue out at her, and she pointedly did the same before storming off down the hall. Just to irritate her, Lance started yelling again to hear her shout, “ _Lance!_ ”

  


  


“So basically, I have a flight booked on the twentieth after my afternoon class and I’ll be spending the night in some hotel in downtown _San Francisco_ ,” he explained to Hunk as he was unpacking his shit from break back into his closet. It required a lot of back-and-forth, so he practically paced in front of Hunk’s startled face at hearing all this.

“So you get to meet _thee_ Alon Lotor?” Hunk asked.

“I don’t—I don’t know. Honestly I bet his email is run by a secretary or something so I probably haven’t even been talking to him directly,” Lance said, frowning at the thought. “I just… hope I don’t come off as ignorant or _naïve_ or anything like that.”

“You won’t, buddy.”

“Aw, thanks babe.”

Lance zipped up his empty suitcase shortly after and stuffed it under their futon. Hunk lifted his legs for the transition before dropping them down and lightly nudging Lance with them. “Do you have any sessions today?” he asked.

“Um… yeah, a few. There’s a frat party going on and so I think one of the frat guys accidentally got roped into this. One of his girl friends paid for the session,” he explained. He always felt guilty accepting money because he knew the chances of finding a person’s soulmate were slim to begin with. After a lot of arguing with Pidge, they decided on cutting the payments in two—a smaller deposit at the start of the session, and if it happened to be a success, they’d pay the second half. It was the best Lance could agree to that wouldn’t take advantage of his efforts.

“Frat party, huh?” Hunk said, wiggling his eyebrows.

“I am _not_ taking you with me,” Lance whined. “Besides, you _hate_ parties.”

“I do hate parties.”

“Then why are you fighting me on this?” he laughed, slapping Hunk on the leg before moving off to drag his backpack over.

They lounged together until Lance had to run off to make it to the party on time. With the chill outside, he sported his usual heavy sweatshirt on top of an _ancient_ hand-me-down that was white with grey stripes. He pocketed his phone and keys and started out, calling behind him, “I’ll be back before ten!”

“No you won’t!” Hunk accused, so Lance flipped him off through the crack in the door before shutting it completely.

Lance wasn’t one for parties, and he tended to blame it on how impersonal they were. He wouldn’t call himself an introvert, though, despite how much he loved having time alone once in a while—which was difficult these days considering he always had a roommate. But being with Hunk wasn’t _exhausting_. He _liked_ spending time with Hunk. They were able to talk about anything and everything, which they couldn’t exactly do at a frat house where the music was too loud to talk over.

Frat Row was several blocks north of his dorm, and he walked the length of it to reach the lawn where colorful lights from inside blended on the grass. The buildings were all ancient with greek symbols tacked onto the front above the doors, and this one was no different. It had a distinctly german style to it, with half-timbered siding with rich, dark wood cut at diagonals and horizontals. He climbed up to the porch and waited around there until a group of girls came out at nine o’ clock sharp.

“Lance! Hi, I was the one to email you,” one of them said, shaking his hand before reaching behind her and pulling a boy out from the throng of girls. “Do you think you could find his soulmate?”

“Come on, guys…” the guy said, rolling his eyes as he blushed all the way from his neck to his ears. Some of the girls giggled as Lance smirked and asked for his name. “You can call me Rolo,” he said.

“Rolo, nice to meet you. I’m Lance. It’ll just take a second for me to find your soulmate line,” he confessed.

He let his eyes unfocused and dial to the shimmering red thread protruding from Rolo’s chest like smoke where it connected. He turned and followed it at the diagonal it cut across the porch and through the lawn.

“This way,” he said, hurrying down the steps with the fleet of tipsy girls following. Rolo stood on the porch for a moment, startled and not exactly in the mood for a witch hunt that night. Regardless, he was prompted to follow because one of the girls rushed back and grabbed him by the arm.

They went on the hunt to follow Rolo’s thread as far as it went. They wove between buildings and regrouped on the other side, taking wind-about trails in an attempt to stay as true to the path as possible. It was pitch black out aside from the street lights, but thankfully Lance didn’t need a light to see the threads at all. They sent off their own nonexistent light that was only visible to Lance’s eyes. It reminded him of sequence catching light on its reflective surfaces.

They’d been walking for fifteen minutes when they took a turn, and the thread started to move. “Wait—” Lance blurted out, throwing his arms out and stopping his horde of students impatiently awaiting the news.

Rolo came to stand beside him, looking between Lance and where his attention was, following the thread as it moved. They were standing around a populated section of Altea’s campus—a large number of dorms were built here, and they were standing directly beside one of them.

“I think they’re in that building,” Lance all but whispered.

One of the girls squealed, “Wait, are you serious? We have to go in there—”

“I think they might be leaving,” he said. “The thread’s moving down the hall…”

“How do you know? Can you see them?” Rolo asked, and as Lance shook his head, he started to lead them towards the front door of the dorm building. In the dark outside, they could see the lobby, and the conglomeration of students gathering there to head out for the night. The thread was now a washed out pink, transitioning to silver as a girl emerged from the hall and sprinted to latch on to one of the girls in the group. They disappeared from view, behind one of the pillars as they started towards the door with the rest of the gang.

“Which one is it?” one of the girls asked Lance, but he was too distracted by the fact that Rolo’s soulmate was lingering behind in the group to kiss her girlfriend behind the closed glass doors.

The group of freshmen started to filter down the steps of the dorm as Rolo looked between Lance and the couple just now leaving the building. “She’s…?” Rolo started, dissolving into a groan. “You can’t be serious.”

“I never—I haven’t found soulmates who weren’t already single,” Lance confessed, heart swelling and straining in his chest as he once again began to regret how famous he was on campus.

The girlfriend, a bigger woman with thighs that could probably crush Lance’s skull, smiled at him as they started to pass. She had her arm around Rolo’s soulmate as she said, “Hey, aren’t you Lance? The Soulmate Guy?”

He paled, looking helplessly at the group of girls with him, and then at Rolo’s face as he looked between the two girls.

“Uh, yeah—”

“What brings you around here?” Rolo’s soulmate asked, looking at his group with a smirk. “Tryna match someone up tonight?” Her thread was pure silver, solid, almost tangible as it cut through Lance to where Rolo was standing behind him.

As he noticed it, he also caught sight of another thread swinging around him, connecting to his chest where it remained red. He tried not to get distracted by it, but couldn’t help but wonder why his own thread was heading farther _west_ …

“I can’t do this,” Rolo said, running his hands down his face as he started to back off.

“But—” one of his friends insisted, but he was already walking away.

Lance frantically looked between Rolo and his soulmate, who looked like she was getting ready for a quick getaway. _Not everything’s going to be perfect_ , Lance told himself before asking, “What’s your name?”

She blinked, startled, and said, “Um, Nyma, why?”

He gestured to where Rolo ran off, and then to her, trying to convey how guilty he felt by barging into a relationship like this when her girlfriend was standing _right there_ looking like she was totally capable of clobbering him. Nyma tipped her head to the side, her long blonde ponytail swishing to the side.

“I… don’t—?” she started, only to gasp when he pointed to Rolo again. She clasped a hand over her mouth, looking up at her girlfriend, who seemed just as confused as Nyma was before. “I have to—at least _talk to him_ , right? I mean, Zethrid—”

“ _What?_ ” she blurted out, but the group of girls split between Lance and Rolo were chanting, “Talk to him! You have to talk to him! Go, go, go!”

“Nyma, wait—” Zethrid started, but Nyma slipped out of her grasp, stammering, “I-I’m sorry, I have to—” and sprinted in the direction of where Rolo just disappeared to, around the corner of the dorm, and likely back to the frat where he could forget about the fact that his perfect half was dating someone else.

“Oh my God,” Lance blurted out, but the girls were shrieking in excitement until the moment Zethrid turned on Lance.

“It’s all just a fucking scam, isn’t it?” she hissed at him, and he flinched away from her. “You can’t see the threads, can you? _Can you!_ ”

“He _totally_ can see them!” one of the girls shouted at her, only to recoil with a soft, “He paired up my roommate a while back—I _swear—_ ”

Zethrid grabbed Lance by the shirt before he could run for it. “I bet you think it’s real funny, splitting couples up—”

“N-No, I don’t, I swear,” he promised, but that didn’t stop her from swinging her fist back and cracking it across his nose. His glasses went flying. A flood of heat ruptured between his eyes, the pressure of it gushing into blood on the concrete as Zethrid dropped him. She sprinted off in the direction of where Nyma and Rolo ran while the three girls with him floundered around in their purses for something to stop the blood.

  


  


Those same girls walked Lance back to his dorm with a period pad flattened to his face to keep the blood from spilling everywhere. His lips and chin were stained pink, and he still felt like he had just gotten punched again, and again, and again. It throbbed between his eyes where the girls were saying things like, “Oh no, he’s swelling up” or “You’ll probably have a black eye tomorrow…”

At the door to his section of the dorm, he said, “I’ll be fine. Thanks for walking me back.”

“It’s no problem. I just—I wish I coulda stopped her from punching you,” one of them said. “I didn’t see it coming at all.”

“Neither did I,” he sighed. “Thanks, though. It means a lot.”

She hugged him, and so did the other two before they all walked back to the dorm lobby, and out the front door. Lance fiddled around with his ID to swipe into that side of the building. In the elevator, he stared at the swollen, red part of his reflection and felt disgusting for barging into Nyma and Zethrid’s relationship like that. _Stupid_ , he thought to himself as he pushed a hand against the gross, squishy pad, and then again to the sore part of his nose.

As he started down his hallway, he heard a flurry of voices coming through his open door. Confused, he slowed a foot or two from the entrance to hear Pidge’s voice exclaiming, “That _rat!_ He never told us shit!”

“I just figured we’d keep it from Shiro and Allura, but we never said anything about—”

Lance was standing in the doorway then, catching sight of those grey eyes looking to him a split second before Pidge all but sprung up from the futon, lunging for Lance as they screamed, “You found your soulmate and you didn’t think to tell _me?!_ ”

“What?” Lance blurted out. “What the hell is going on?”

“Holy _shit_ , your _face_ , man,” Hunk squeaked from the couch.

“Is that a used pad?” Pidge demanded. “Where did you get that!”

Lance’s attention was still focused on the fact that _Keith_ was standing in the middle of his dorm room. “I—I thought you were… Stanford…” Until now, Lance had been entirely convinced that Keith had picked Stanford over Altea University. He hadn’t thought to check… _Our soulmate line. He was coming here when I was pairing up Rolo and Nyma_.

Keith looked disoriented, trying to concentrate on Lance’s eyes when there was clear evidence that Lance’s mouth and chin were doused in blood at one point. “Uh… I picked Altea. I… wanted to surprise you… but—What the _hell_ happened to your face?”

Lance laughed, and he laughed so hard that he swore another blood vessel ruptured in his nose. He didn’t care, though, because he was already dodging Pidge to fling himself at Keith as he shouted, “You picked Altea! Holy shit, holy shit—”

Keith caught him, swaying with the force of the impact. They clung to one another as Lance propped his hand up on Keith’s shoulder so he could rest his blood-stained chin on it without staining Keith’s clothes. He held the pad at a distance as they twisted around, Lance eventually came face-to-face with a furious Pidge who still demanded answers. They glowered up at him, lips pursed into a slim, angry line that had Lance flinching.

Lance pulled away, partially covering his nose with the pad as he looked sheepishly at the door, saying, “I should, um, probably wash up. If you don’t mind hanging around for a bit longer.”

“Yeah, that’s fine,” Keith said.

“I’ll get you an ice pack from the RA,” Hunk suggested, standing up as Lance went to grab a towel and his face wash supplies.

He looked back at Keith and Pidge before leaving to say, “Pidge, don’t harass him.”

“No promises.”

“Keith, don’t listen to them. All they tell are _lies_.”

Keith laughed and agreed to it, crossing his arms as Pidge glared up at him before the door closed. Hunk was already around the corner of the hall so he couldn’t see the way Lance half-swooned, fanning himself before dancing his way to the bathroom with what looked like a used pad in his hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> D: Writer's block strikes again so naturally I start writing 7k of something else. Fluff is on the way. I'm trying to avoid the angst but if you couldn't tell... that is v v hard to do.


	3. the fascination phase

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This accidentally turned into an 11k chapter, so... yeah XD

“Dorms didn’t really work out, and it’s hella expensive anyways, so Allura helped me find an apartment close to campus. It’s on Thayserix—that huge boulevard strip? It’s at the end. Here, I’ll write down the address for you.”

Lance looked down at the slip of paper Keith tore out of one of his notebooks. Keith’s handwriting was godawful, but Lance could look past that. He read off the address number and looked up at the building ahead of him. It was a flat brick building—nothing decorative about it, except maybe the windowsills. Someone had plants out on their sill, which Lance thought was a bit precarious considering A) it was a bit chilly out and B) there wasn’t a railing to stop them from toppling over.

Just as Lance was about to text Keith, he reverted back to the habit he put himself into and called Keith up. On the third ring, Keith picked up with a, “ _Hey. Are you here?_ ”

“Yeah, I’m standing outside your building,” Lance said, squinting up at the windows.

The phone line crackled as Keith shuffled around before saying, “ _I’ll be down in a second. How was- How was your day? Did you find the place all right?_ ”

“Yeah, yeah. Everything’s been great so far. Nothing to complain about,” he confessed, though his nose still throbbed on occasion. The bags under his eyes were a dark, bruised purple from Zethrid’s hit, but other than that, his eyes didn’t swell up as bad as he thought they would. The pads on his glasses sometimes put too much pressure on the bruises, but they _seriously_ needed to be adjusted anyways. Zethrid’s hit sent them flying into the grass where they were crooked until one of the girls bent arms of his glasses back into place.

His insides practically _fizzling_ with the idea that this was actually happening. He was in the same city as the person he would potentially be with for the rest of his life. He didn’t want to look at any of the flaws in their situation—the fact that they were still young and stupid, mostly—because this is what he had always wanted without ever fully realizing it. He was content watching other people accomplish “young love”, but now—

“How’s your day been?” he asked, climbing the steps to the porch as he saw a figure move behind the foggy glass of the door.

“ _Great, but I imagine it’s gonna be perfect_ now,” Keith said as he shoved the door open for Lance, and stood there for a moment in the threshold just taking in the sight of Lance in his oversized sweatshirt and joggers.

Lance realized that they were both still on the phone. “I’m gonna hang up now,” he said, but he couldn’t manage anything above a whisper at that point. His voice was bound to crack.

“Oh, right,” Keith laughed, shutting his phone off and stuffing it in his pocket.

Lance ducked his head, grinning so hard his cheeks were starting to hurt. When he looked up, Keith was slightly closer, letting the door tip against his shoulder as he reached out to hug Lance. Lance felt the fizzling sensation in his gut burst into a shudder as he sighed into Keith’s embrace. He’d been thinking about Keith and how easy it was to _forget_ because it had only been _one day_ that they saw each other. He had the content of a few hours to replay again and again in his head until his brain warped the footage and made it impossible to tell whether or not Lance had imagined the dimples on Keith’s cheeks.

They stood in the threshold, pressed against the closing door until it locked behind them. Lance considered the chances that he’d be able to hug Keith like this for _years_ now. This didn’t have a time limit like most relationships gave the impression of. This wasn’t temporary, an activity to fill the lonely part of Lance’s mind. He never considered himself “lonely”, but… he loved the attention Keith was giving him. It was what he wanted, wasn’t it? Coming into college.

“Ready to see my apartment?” Keith asked, arms still tight around Lance’s torso. He slackened his own grip on Keith’s shoulders to see the look on Keith’s face when they came eye-to-eye.

“Yeah, I’m _always_ ready,” Lance said, slinging his arms around Keith’s shoulders as he unlocked the second entry door for them.

Keith’s apartment was on the second floor, away from the street with a less-than-excellent view of a dingy backyard, a garage, and the alleyway beyond it. The rooms were boxy and narrow, and for the sake of just having a place to stay, it was great. The kitchen had everything except a dishwasher, even if the appliances were a bit dated.

The tour didn’t last all that long before they both collapsed on the couch outside Keith’s bedroom door. It looked like a brand new futon, but when Lance asked where he bought his furniture, Keith shook his head. “Shiro and I went dumpster diving. Apparently there’s a lot of students leaving this semester who couldn’t take furniture with them.”

“Wait—Are you serious? You picked this out of a _dumpster?_ ”

“Yeah. There’s an apartment complex a few blocks down from here. I mean, it was on top of everything and there wasn’t anything wrong with the cushion,” he defended, almost as if he was offended by Lance’s inability to grasp _dumpster diving_.

“I seriously can’t _believe_ you,” Lance gawked, prodding his hands on the futon and plucking at the cushion back. “Who knows what people _did_ on this!”

“Why are you thinking about that!”

“I- Stop accusing me of things!”

“Accusing you of what!” Keith cried out, giggling.

Lance stammered, “Of thinking about the _saucy things_ people must’ve done on this couch! Why else would it be in the dumpster?”

“I imagine because they couldn’t take it back to wherever they moved to!” Keith insisted. He tipped into Lance to judge him, but didn’t move away as they settled against one another like two books tipping together on the shelf, and using the weight of one another to stay upright. Eventually, Keith sighed, looking down at his phone and saying, “Sorry I don’t have much for entertainment here…”

“It’s fine. I’m cool just chilling like this.”

“Okay. But fair warning, now I just remembered that I need to go dumpster diving tonight. I saw a wicked coffeemaker behind one of the buildings down 15th.”

“Keith… it’s in the dumpster for a _reason_ …”

“I’ll find out why after I try it out myself,” he said, and Lance rolled his eyes.

His attention went back to Keith, who was picking at his phone case as they leant together on the couch in silence. _This is the face on the other end of your red line_ , Lance thought to himself, and glimpsed down, refocusing his vision to see the silver between them, glowing like starlight passing between the strings of existence. It glistened and with his eyes tuned in to this frequency, he could see them reflecting in the now-foggy contrast of Keith’s eyes studying him now.

“What are you looking at?” Keith asked. “You spaced out.”

“Just… looking at our soulmate line,” he confessed, and blushed at the confession. He rubbed a hand through his hair and cleared his throat, about to apologize for spacing out.

“Well don’t look so _guilty_ ,” Keith laughed. “Tell me what it looks like.”

“Um…”

“What? Is it one of those magic things you can’t explain?” he asked, and Lance shook his head.

“No, it’s just—it’s different. I think it’s because it’s my own thread and not someone else’s. Or maybe if everyone could see them, this is what their’s would look like when they meet their soulmates,” Lance explained, shaking his head again before tipping it momentarily onto Keith’s shoulder. He closed his eyes to focus on describing it. “It’s… like… it’s silver because we’re near each other. They all sort of look like when you pluck a taut chord or something—they vibrate constantly and kind of look like they’re glitching out most of the time.”

“So if that’s what they look like most of the time, what does it look like now?” Keith asked, prompting Lance to raise his head and meet Keith’s gaze.

“It glows a lot more than the others. It kind of has the… motion of an audio spectrum? But more like the Aurora Borealis. And it’s definitely still silver.” Lance focused in on it again before bringing his eyes back up to Keith’s.

“It sounds beautiful,” he confessed. “I wish I could see it.”

 _It is beautiful_ , Lance was about to say, but he was stuck staring at Keith’s cute nose, and the fact that he was showing off those dimples with his grin.

“ _God_ , I love your dimples,” Lance blurted out, voice quiet.

He loved the way Keith flushed at the compliment, and laughed in surprise when Lance beamed at him. “Come on,” Keith said, still giggling.

“What? I love your dimples. Do you want me to say it again?” he asked, and Keith shook his head, covering his mouth and nose, but still exposing the evidence that said he was smiling. “Look, I’ll say it again. I love your dimples.”

“ _Stop—_ ”

“What?” Lance chuckled, tucking their faces together. They were close enough so that the action only caused him to move an inch or two. He rubbed his forehead against Keith’s temple and sighed.

“Am I supposed to say what I love about you now?” Keith asked.

“No, you don’t have to. It’s just an observation of mine. I’m sure I love far more than your dimples,” he said, and Keith huffed a laugh, closing his eyes.

“I love your glasses,” he said. “They make you look studious.”

“Oh my God.”

“What are you even majoring in? I don’t think you ever told me.”

Lance leant his head back against the cushion and groaned, clearing his throat as he glanced sparingly at Keith before saying, “I… am mostly undecided. I’ve always been super into photography, though, so… there’s that.”

“Oh. Oh! Those photos on your website? Did you take those?” he asked, and Lance nodded.

The photoshoots of the “happy couples” were always done by Lance. It was mostly because he had the skill and therefore didn’t have to pay someone else to do it, and also, it was good practice. Several of the shoots were put up for critique and considering they weren’t deemed _terrible_ , Lance figured he could go on being the website photographer.

“Damn,” Keith said. “I love your photography.”

“Shuddup…”

“I do. I love your photography. _Lance! I. Love. Your. Photography!_ ” Keith shouted, shaking Lance by his shoulders with each word. Lance’s heart nearly burst from his chest when Keith swung his arms around Lance from behind, crossing them over his chest. It was a bold move, and Lance knew Keith knew, just from the way he hesitated, about to pull back, but instead tucked his face up beside Lance’s and said, “Does this mean _we_ get a photoshoot?”

“Only if you want Shiro to have an aneurism if he checks the website,” Lance said. “But—I would _love_ to do a photoshoot with you. I mean, technically, I _did_ pair us up.”

“More content for the Soulmate Line,” he hummed.

Lance accepted his place in Keith’s arms, pressed against his chest on that suspicious futon whose home was once in a dumpster. He cleared his throat and said, “So… what’s your family like?”

“Um… busy. My parents work a lot, and I usually work because otherwise I’d probably… just be playing video games,” he confessed. “I imagine you had a lot of friends in high school.”

“Is that to say you didn’t?”

“I… never _really_ attended high school, actually,” Keith confessed. Lance covered a hand over the ones Keith held to his arm. “I was homeschooled, and then took courses at this university in San Antonio. I’m technically a junior in college—”

“Wait, what—”

“—But when I was ‘technically in high school’ I basically just covered all of my gen-eds then. So I could start my major faster—”

“How smart are you? Actually? Like, is my future bae a Steven Hawking and I didn’t know?”

“What? No. I took the SAT and ACT. I got a 2250 and a 34.”

“Holy fuck. You’re brilliant.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m sorry I’m not as smart as you. You were probably expecting some _genius_ or something—”

“I was not. I had no expectations,” Keith said. “And I don’t care because tests like that don’t prove anything aside from what your brain considers imperative to memorize. It’s just not realistic expecting kids to memorize every goddamn thing they learned in high school.”

“But there _are_ kids who memorize every goddamn thing—”

“Yeah, but those are outliers, Lance,” he sighed. “They don’t count.”

“They do count… everyone counts…”

“Well, yeah, but that’s not what I mean. You _are_ smart, Lance. You couldn’t exactly’ve gotten into this school if you weren’t,” Keith said, and that pacified Lance’s pride more than he anticipated. He told himself that a lot, even though his ACT scores were lower than the majority of the students who went to Altea. He never _considered_ himself to be dumb—he always did well in high school.

“Thanks, Keith,” Lance murmured.

“No problem. But what about you? What’s your family like?”

“They’re all kinda… crazy, and really, _really_ loud,” he confessed, laughing nervously. “Everyone says living in the dorms and having neighbors is annoying but honestly? It’s nothing compared to having my sister’s room right next door. Her name’s Rosa—she’s my youngest sibling. And then there’s Julian. He’s in high school now.”

“So are you the oldest then?”

“Yeah. I… honestly, I’m kind of guilty about this, but… I sort of picked an out-of-state school so that they wouldn’t visit me constantly on the weekends. Because they _definitely would_. Like, I love them, don’t get me wrong, but I’d lose my _mind_ if I had to live in New Mexico for a whole ‘nother four years _and_ deal with my siblings every week.”

“They can’t be _that_ bad.”

“Right! They aren’t, but my Ma would probably drop them on me because I always ‘babysat’ them even though they didn’t need babysitting. You know what I mean?”

“Uh…”

“Wait, did you have any siblings?”

“No, I’m an only child. And I don’t really like kids so I never babysat before.”

“That’s fair. I don’t think I could stand having kids yet. They’re a huge responsibility—”

“—And a recipe for life-long financial instability.”

“Uh, sure, that too,” Lance said.

They talked until they tipped over on the futon and laid together as best they could. Keith talked more about San Antonio, and Lance described Santa Fe in vivid detail. They shared pictures on their phones of memories and people (and memes Lance had lying around in his photos). Eventually, though, it started to get dark, and with classes the next day, Lance had to walk back to his dorm. But…

Keith was carding his fingers through Lance’s hair. It started off as just pinching and petting is hair, but now he was massaging Lance’s scalp and it felt _so damn good_.

“If you keep doing that, I’ll just never leave,” Lance hummed contently.

Keith combed his fingers over Lance’s hair again. “Then I guess I’ll just never stop.”

“Seriously, Keith, I should head back. I haven’t had dinner yet and I left my backpack in my dorm,” Lance insisted, but it was more or less acknowledged by Keith, and then promptly dismissed. “Keith.”

“We’ll make dinner in a little bit,” he said, and Lance accepted his fate as a guest for the night.

They’d eat pizza in the comfort of Keith’s room where Lance could watch an episode or two of the show Keith was currently on. The bed was a comfortable size for the both of them, and by the time they fell asleep beside one another, and woke up the next day, neither of them had moved. Lance turned onto his back that morning, his chest a contradiction of how light and heavy he felt, lying in Keith’s bed all through the night. He heard Keith shuffled beside him, and turned to watch Keith blink his eyes open. He grinned sleepily at Lance and said, “Morning,” and Lance felt it pierce him through his ribs, and leave him breathless for a few seconds.

He cleared his throat to say, “Morning.”

“Your phone was buzzing earlier,” he said, reaching for the end table beside him.

He passed Lance his phone, but he could already see Hunk’s name written all over it. “ _Shit_ , I forgot to tell Hunk I wasn’t coming back,” he moaned, flopping back on the pillows as Keith leaned over to see the concerned, all-caps-for-emphasis texts Hunk sent him.

“Hunk’s a good roommate.”

“He is. We’re, like, best friends and all and I _love_ him—he’s the best,” Lance sighed. “I wish I would’ve met him sooner. I mean, he’s just _so_ nice, you know?”

“I guess. I don’t… really know much about him yet,” Keith said, propping himself up on his elbow to look down at Lance as he started texting Hunk. Best to let the big guy know that he’ll be back in twenty minutes to get ready for class.

“I should start heading back. I have class at eight,” he confessed.

“That’s fine. But—I have a question,” Keith said, and Lance set his phone down to look up at the way Keith worried his lip between his teeth, eyes settling on the blankets. “I… know I said stuff about waiting until college was over, but… I didn’t really expect to come here. You know?”

“Yeah.”

“Us not dating until college was over was, like… Plan B if I ended up going elsewhere.”

“Yeah.”

“So…?” Keith finished, raising his eyebrows at Lance’s silly grin.

“So… you wanna go steady? With me?” he asked, and Keith nodded, laughing as Lance sat up, exclaiming, “Well, _yeah_ , I wanna go steady with you, too! Let’s do it!”

“Are you sure—”

“Surer than anything! Oh my _God_ , I’m so ready to date you.” Lance flew forward, his arms linking themselves around Keith’s neck as Keith lost his balance and fell onto the pillows. Lance smothered him with hugs until he was at his fifteen minute window to get the fuck out of there and to his dorm in time to get ready for class. “Oh, _shit_ , I gotta go. I gotta go! I’ll text you later, though, okay?”

“Call me,” Keith corrected as Lance tumbled off the bed in search of his shoes.

“Shit, right. Okay, I’ll call you, and… we can figure out first date material. And when you wanna hang next.”

“Okay. Stop lingering around here—get to class! Oh my God, Lance,” Keith laughed as Lance jumped into motion and raced out of the door.

  


  


“Thanks for the ride. I don’t really know anyone else who has a car on campus,” Lance said as he dropped into the passenger’s seat of Ezor’s car.

She turned the volume down on her music to say, “It’s no problem. I didn’t have much going on today.”

“How’s Acxa?” he asked, suddenly nervous about asking such questions after that dreadful experience with Rolo and Nyma. He pushed his glasses up and turned to see Ezor grinning like the little demon she was.

“Acxa’s _great_. She would’ve come with, but she has a presentation to prepare for,” she said. “And I just end up distracting her, so I figured she could use some time on her own.”

“That’s fair—”

“But Pidge tells me that you’ve been seeing someone,” Ezor said, wiggling her eyebrows at Lance as he groaned and rolled his eyes. _Why_ wasn’t he surprised that Pidge kept in contact with Ezor? _And_ ratted him out about Keith? “I can’t believe you found your soulmate. That’s so fucking rad.”

“It is pretty rad.”

“What’s he like?”

Lance rolled his eyes, but Ezor just stopped the car in the parking lot to raise an eyebrow at him. She was serious, and so Lance sighed and it turned into a lovestruck smile. “He’s just… He’s _super_ smart. Like, _really_ smart. And he likes to cuddle.”

“Cuddling is _always_ good,” she said, starting the car back up again and heading out onto the main road. “Will I get to meet him?”

“Probably. I mean, he goes to our school now. You might see him around,” he confessed.

“What’s he look like? Do you have a picture?” she asked, pulling up to a stop light as Lance pulled up the last selfie he saved from Snapchats he took the other day. They had spent the afternoon walking around before one of Keith’s later classes, and he had his sunglasses on since his light grey eyes were susceptible to sunlight, but the sequence of two photos brought him closer to the screen with Lance in the background, peering over the rim of his sunglasses at the camera.

Ezor squealed and swiped for more, stumbling across a picture Lance stole when Keith snapped him a picture of himself without his classic ponytail. His hair was a frizzy mess of waves in the bathroom mirror.

Someone honked their horn behind them, and so Ezor jolted her attention back to the road. “He’s adorable! I love him already. I hope everything works out with you two.”

They talked until Ezor pulled up text to the drop-off curb at the airport the morning of January 20th, the day Lance was meant to go to San Francisco. Ezor hopped out of the driver’s door to hurry around and tackle Lance before he had the chance to take his backpack out of the backseat. She clung to him like this would be the last time they ever saw each other, and Lance hung on until she loosened her grip.

“I’m so thrilled that this is happening to you! You’re gonna have so much fun,” she said, pulling back to clasp her hands under her chin.

“I’m _really_ excited, but also mostly nervous,” he confessed, attempting to smile beyond the grimace that was most likely on his face. “I’ll keep you posted, though.”

“All right. Good luck and have fun,” she said, hugging him again before hurrying back to her open car door. Lance shouldered his backpack and leaned over to wave at her through the window.

He printed out his ticket and headed for his gate with his backpack secured, and his energy level at an all-time high. It wasn’t often that he was able to take a plane ride—his family often took road trips—so seeing the airport for the first time in perhaps ten years was both exciting and nerve-racking.

He passed by a wall of windows overlooking the concrete fields where planes pulled away from gates and started off on their tracks. He stood and watched for a while before double checking his gate number and heading off towards it. On his way there, he remembered the message Keith gave him and gave him a call.

As the phone rung, Lance popped his earbuds in and pulled the microphone closer to his mouth when Keith answered, “ _Hey! How’s it going?_ ”

“Good! Ezor just dropped me off and I’m looking for my gate now,” he said, gasping. “Oh! They have nifty conveyer belt things for humans!”

“ _I call them floor escalators,_ ” Keith said just as Lance lunged towards it. The floor pulled him forward, and as he walked, he doubled the speed of anyone walking off of the conveyer belt. “ _You still have a while until your flight. You’ll be fine._ ”

“Yeah. I think I’m purposefully dilly dallying at this point,” he confessed, slowing to take in the scenery as it passed him. “What are you doing?”

“ _Waiting for my last class to start. Talking to you._ ”

“I _love_ that you’re talking to me,” Lance gushed, leaning a little too heavily on the railing and causing it to pull on his shirt and yank him backwards. He straightened up, fixing his shirt as he said, “What class?”

“ _A boring data structures class… I’m trying not to lose my mind in case you couldn’t tell,_ ” he said, and Lance could picture his typical way of slouching in his chair as the boredom sank in. “ _It’s a necessary evil, though._ ”

“What’s your favorite class then?”

“ _I love my physics lab…_ ”

“Gross! Oh my God, who brainwashed you into thinking physics is _fun_ ,” Lance said, fake-gagging into the phone as he stumbled off the conveyer belt and checked the gate numbers around this area.

They talked until Keith’s class started, and Lance found a spot next to his gate. He charged his phone for the two hour flight, though he probably used up most of the battery at that time, just scrolling through the pictures Ezor only started to skim through during that red light. Photographs where the perfect way to memorize Keith Kogane’s face without blatantly staring at him from across the room. _That_ would be a recipe for an uncomfortable situation.

Though, they were still in the phase Ezor dubbed _The Fascination Phase_. It went beyond The Honey Moon Phase since it technically came _before_ that point. Before an actual relationship blossomed. “It must be exclusive to soulmates—I met up with another one of couples you paired together and they _totally_ know what it is,” Ezor had explained in the car. “It’s, like, realizing you have a crush on someone you’ve never seen or met before, and you’re _finally_ able to see their face. And so you’re just _fascinated_ by them because you want to find out why you’ve been crushing on them in the first place.”

Lance wondered if Keith often found himself studying pictures on his phone from the times they spent together. It wasn’t that Lance saw them at all—it was just that every now and then he caught Keith saving pictures from Snapchat of his face and just figured Keith had a Lance Album Collection started.

Keith _was_ attractive. Lance couldn’t deny it, even after spending so much time trying to look for faults. And there would always be faults. Lance didn’t expect _anyone_ to be perfect, let alone his soulmate, which meant that Keith snored a little—but it was more like _really_ heavy sighs—and he didn’t know how to fucking wash dishes—they just seemed to pile up more and more every time Lance came over. His cleanliness was an issue, even though somehow his hair managed to stay silky smooth and his skin wasn’t greasy at all despite taking shows _once every three days_. That _heathen_. No one was supposed to look that great on such a scarce shower routine.

Lance looks up from his phone to watch the flight before him exit the gate and hurry towards the baggage claim. He’s reminded that just about anything could go wrong— he could’ve forgotten his ticket (he hadn’t), he could be sitting at the wrong gate (he checks to be sure he wasn’t), the flight could have been at _night_ rather than in the _morning_ (it wasn’t, he checked the time to be sure). By the time his flight anxiety was under control and reassured, they were calling up people to board. He waited for his class, and bit into his lip to keep from squealing all the way down the track to the plane to his seat and finally as the plane started to pull away from the gate.

 _This is it. I’m going to San Francisco_ , he thought, scrambling to dig through his backpack and pull out his condensed camera bag. He twisted the screen around and took the highest quality selfie imaginable before realizing that the woman in the neighboring seat was giving him a strange look.

“I… haven’t flown in a plane in a while,” he explained.

“Ah,” she said.

  


  


Lance didn’t know where to go when he got off the plane, and so he followed everyone else before he was stopped by a crowd of people waiting for relatives and friends. He double-checked his email, still hardly believing the last message Alon Lotor himself sent him. _“Don’t forget your passport and license just in case, along with a swimsuit—the hotel has a lovely pool. Look for a man with white hair holding a sign that says ‘Lance McClain’. That should be me._ ”

Lance looked up from his phone, and thanks to the white-haired bit in the message, it was almost _too_ easy spotting Mr. Lotor. The man’s elegant white hair was knitted back in tight braids that fell over his broad shoulders that were only accentuated by his navy, high-end jacket. His long, slim fingers were covered in slender black gloves that held up the sign that read _LANCE MCCLAIN_ in a slanted, handwritten script.

 _Don’t make a fool out of yourself_ , Lance told himself. _Shake his hand. Ask how he is. Simple_.

He pocketed his phone, hands shaking as he started towards Mr. Lotor. Their eyes connected and held until Lance waved several steps away.

“Lance McClain, I take it,” he commented, and grinned as Lance held out his hand.

“Yeah, and you must be Mr. Lotor,” Lance said, hoping his handshake was firm enough.

“Please—most people call me Lotor these days so you can too,” he said, still smiling with those sharp canines that could probably pierce flesh. _He looks like a goddamn vampire_ , Lance thought, though he was certain he would have felt more intimidated had Lotor looked like a corpse risen from the dead. Thankfully Lotor’s dark skin was fresh, probably exfoliated, and not exactly teeming with maggots.

“Okay. Lotor it is,” Lance said.

“I have a car for us just outside. I don’t exactly have a schedule for the weekend because I don’t quite know how your magic works,” Lotor confessed. “Have you used ordinary magic before?”

“Ah, no. No one suspected I’d be able to _use_ magic, let alone _see_ it,” he admitted as they started towards the exit. It was light out and _definitely_ colder than San Diego. The moisture in the air made Lance grateful for his trusty sweatshirt-jacket. “Do… you use magic at all?”

“Nothing that’s terribly useful,” Lotor huffed, and Lance found himself smiling. “I have an astounding ability to sense the future like deja vu.”

“Whoa. That sounds useful to me.”

“Yes, well, usually it’s just warning me when my toast is about to jump out of the toaster. It usually comes with a jolt of adrenaline, which isn’t exactly sought after,” he explained, and Lance laughed against all sense. He slapped his hand over his mouth, and was surprised to hear Lotor’s laughter, and its deep, bubbling pitch. “It’s ridiculous! But it helps when I’m channel surfing. I know the whole directory because of it.”

“Because you know what shows are coming up.”

“Precisely. This is us,” he declared, gesturing to the silver vehicle waiting on the curb for them. Lance peered at the front and realized there was a driver sitting there, so he followed Lotor to the backseat and climbed in, dropping his backpack between his feet.

“I’m sure you’re wondering exactly _what_ is the plan here,” Lotor started after telling the driver to wait a moment.

“You could say that, yeah—”

“I need you to find my soulmate,” he said. Lance looked away from the back of the driver’s seat to stare at Lotor, who was waiting for some response. Instead, he continued before Lance could stammer himself into the Embarrassment Corner. “Like I said, I don’t know how this works, and I was speaking with my team and they recommended the best route is to experience it for myself. The evidence of your magic will be more profound that way, with a solid proof of evidence.

“And I’m past my young adult years and if we do find my soulmate along the line… now is a decent time to settle down,” he said as Lance’s jaw dropped even further. Lotor sighed, clasping his hands on his lap before turning back to Lance, frowning, “This is all probably much too personal for you. I can’t imagine you’re all that interested in my love life when we’ve only just met.”

“Uh, no! No, not at all. I don’t mind,” he insisted, shaking his head. “I just—there’s a… few cautionary measures I should explain to you first, though.”

“I can’t imagine the process is _dangerous_ ,” Lotor laughed, “Your articles make it seem like a fairly easy thing.”

“It is! Generally speaking. I mean, one thing to keep in mind is that your soulmate might not even _be_ in San Francisco. And I think it’s more likely that soulmates are in areas where they’ll eventually cross paths, and since you’ve been everywhere…”

“The chances of them being in San Francisco are slim. I see,” he hummed, pinching a finger to his chin. After a moment he said, “I was expecting this. When’s the latest that you can return to San Diego?”

 _Holy shit._ “Monday. At… probably eleven in the morning,” Lance said. “But there’s also other things to consider. I mean, this has only happened once so far, but… you have to be prepared that your soulmate _could_ potentially be in a relationship with someone else. Or, for your sake, _married_ to someone else.”

“That’s fair to assume… Would you tell me about the last time you saw this happen? I don’t recall reading it off of your website.”

“It was recent, so it wouldn’t be up there yet,” he sighed. He and Pidge had been hesitant to even do anything with the potential article until they were sure there was some resolution between Nyma and Zethrid that wasn’t dramatic and potentially harmful to the Soulmate Line business.

“We can discuss it later then,” Lotor suggested. “Shall we start the search?”

Swallowing hard, Lance convinced himself that he _could_ do this. He hoped that whoever Lotor’s soulmate was, that they were in San Francisco. _That would certainly make this easier_ , he thought to himself as he nodded to Lotor.

Lance unfocused his eyes. He adjusted his vision like he was rearranging his camera settings for outdoors rather than in. He ignored the direction of his own red thread, and instead focused on Lotor’s…

It passed through his jacket and out westward. The main difficulty with that was, with Lance’s rudimentary understanding of San Francisco logic, it meant that they were already nearly as close to the ocean as you could get. He ran a hand through his hair and brought himself back, realizing that Lotor looked thrilled to hear Lance’s news.

“It… goes west from here,” he confessed.

“Perfect. Drive us as far west as you can,” Lotor said, clapping the back of the driver’s seat. The car started moving as Lotor turned to Lance and said, “See if it moves at all when we’re driving.”

And thus… began the race. They passed through San Bruno on the way to the coast, the excitement hinging on whether or not Lotor’s soulmate line would move. Lance kept them steering west until the driver was forced to turn the vehicle north on the strip of road following the rocky cliffs of the West Coast.

They stepped out of the car at the nearest viewing point, and Lance traced the line out onto the horizon as far as it would allow him to see.

“What do you see?” Lotor asked.

“It… just keeps going,” Lance said, shuddering at what that meant. He looked at where the shifting red line passed through Lotor’s heart before moving his eyes up to meet Lotor’s. He shrugged helplessly and said, “They aren’t in America.”

“Well,” Lotor huffed, hands on his hips as he looked out at the ocean again. He tapped his foot for a moment, squinting at the horizon as a gust of frigid air buffeted their hair. “We’ll just have to book a flight to Japan then.”

Lotor was already off and on his phone by the time Lance processed that he would be taking the co-founder of _Empire_ magazine to _Japan_. He was still dizzy with the idea of _Japan_ when the driver took them back on the road to the airport. Lotor was talking to someone about making arrangements to bring a suitcase of his things from his apartment, and to cancel Lance’s hotel reservation in preparation for one in Tokyo for each of them.

 _Good thing I brought my camera with_ , Lance thought, lightheaded and frantic over this _insane_ , spontaneous eleven hour trip.

  


  


Lance fell asleep during the flight, which is to be expected, but he could already tell that his sleep schedule would be screwed the day he got back to San Diego. His Snapchat was littered with evidence of Hunk’s screenshots of discrete snapshots of Lotor sitting across from him, waiting for their flight to Japan that would take off at three in the afternoon. There were pictures of Lotor on his laptop with Lance screaming in the text banners, “ _I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING. LOOK AT HIS BEAUTIFUL FACE._ ”

Only once was Lance caught, and it was by Lotor saying, “I know you’re taking Snaps of me. How do I look in them? At least make sure they’re good pictures.”

They were accompanied by a guard, but surprisingly not a translator. “I’m fluent in five languages—Japanese is one of them,” Lotor explained to Lance, who later would scream about it in the hotel room (that he didn’t have to share _with anyone_ ) on the phone in a voice text he left with Keith since it was some ungodly hour in the middle of the night.

“This is the coolest fucking thing that’s ever happened to me. The fucking windows are _automatic_ you just click a button and they close on their own. Lotor bought me dinner on the plane and it was a _godsend_. I’m so wired right now but apparently there’s a pool downstairs so I’m gonna go check that out. I’ll talk to you later babe—bye!”

He sent the voice recording and decided to leave his phone to charge in the hotel room. Everything was light and airy and gave Lance the distinct impression that he was stuck in a plastic tube. The elevator shot down to the first floor, and he nearly thought he’d float into the air halfway down before gravity plummeted into the pit of his stomach and sent him staggering out of the elevator doors. They snapped shut behind him, but he was already too busy gawking at the pool through the glass to worry about losing a foot.

He gaped at the shape of it, the size of it, the plants covering the walls and that _goddamn waterfall_ that was trickling down into the pool. He was almost too starstruck to realize that Lotor had beat him down here, and their stoic-as-all-hell bodyguard was lingering in the corner, staring at him through the window.

He caught Lotor’s eye and waved, hurrying over to the door as he heard above the rush of water Lotor saying, “Lance! You found it!”

“Yeah, kind of hard to miss once you get to the floor,” he laughed. “This place is… _incredible_. Thank you so much for covering the room for me—”

Lotor waved him off, reaching for the glass on the tabletop beside him. “I always stay at this hotel whenever I visit. I hope you don’t mind the small rooms—”

“Not at all! It’s perfect,” he insisted, shaking his head quickly.

He let his gaze wander of the arches around them, causing the room to dome and peak at the top with a string of lights that glistened like stars on the water. Lance set his towel a chair over from Lotor’s and asked, “Are you gonna go swimming?”

“Hm? Oh, no, I’m fine just being present,” he said, waving Lance off as he reclined his head back and closed his eyes. “Truthfully, I love the smell of chlorine… it reminds me of summer.”

Lance tugged his shirt off and left it with his towel before stepping towards the pool and diving in. The water drifted over him like silk, enveloping him in a warm pocket of water that left the air feeling cold in comparison. He tipped back and floated at the top of the water until the clock hit six in the evening. They planned to continue their journey the following day, and one of the first things they did after landing was check the direction of Lotor’s soulmate compass.

They would head north of Tokyo.

Lotor booked a rail pass that would take them as far north as they could. “We’ll hop off sooner if need be. It’ll take five hours from here to there,” he explained the next day after they woke up at the break of dawn for breakfast. “I trust that you’ll know when we’re closer to their location, right?”

“Of course. I’ll keep my eye on your thread,” Lance promised in between bites of breakfast, which consisted of a paste-like substance not completely unlike homemade oatmeal at home.

Truthful to his word, Lance remained diligent, and used the brief opportunity that morning to call Keith where their time zones intersected at the same time Lance was completely alone in his hotel room. “My Ma would have an aneurysm if I used my debit card or something here and she _saw_ that I was in _Japan_ without her _permission_. Aye yai yai!” he cried out, flopping down on his bed as the panic set in. “I can’t believe I never thought to _warn her_ —! What if I die here!”

“You won’t die over there, Lance,” Keith sighed, slouching in front of his webcam as he watched Lance yelp and panic until someone knocked on his door, and the bodyguard called out, “We’re leaving in five minutes!”

“O-Okay! Just a moment!” he stammered out, cursing under his breath and hissing, “Oh my God, my Ma is gonna _flay me alive!_ ”

“Well, considering you’ve panicked this entire Skype call over what your mother will say, why don’t we talk later? Go have fun playing Cupid,” Keith said, smiling as Lance sighed, tucking his head onto his forearms as they studied one another through the _awful_ pixel quality of Skype. “I’ll try again later?”

“I’ll be on a train for maybe five hours. I dunno when I’ll have wifi next,” he confessed. “But yeah. Try again later.”

They were out of the hotel and on the streets of Tokyo once more. Lance tried to ignore how obviously _different_ they were, but it was hard to, especially when people seemed to stare at them every step of the way. Alon Lotor wasn’t exactly a _discrete_ man—his white hair made him the exact _opposite_. Lance gave up trying to make some grand, professional impression on Lotor and ended up being That Tourist who took pictures of everything. Since the start of their eleven hour flight, they _had_ spent a great while talking, and Lance was thrilled that a man like Lotor trusted him with such seemingly-mundane things. He wondered vaguely how much of this information journalists would die for when it came to writing articles about the latest _Empire_ news.

“I’m trying my best not to get my hopes up. It’s becoming more and more _difficult_ the farther we get from California,” he had said near the start of the flight, elbow propped up on his arm rest, the backs of his fingers cradling his chin.

“No matter what you’ll get closure. I mean, we _are_ flying across the Pacific for this,” Lance had said, and as Lotor scoffed, he added, “It’s not like the Soulmate Line at all. The students treat it like… a sham. Like I’m at the other end of a fake palmistry table until I tell them the truth.” He remembered how Lotor kept his leather-bound journal on his lap, and flipped it open while Lance talked. It just made him want to talk more.

Lotor had the notebook out again at the train station, surrounded by people in suits and skirts, kids with suitcases, briefcases, backpacks. The air was dry rather than the chilly, moist temperatures of San Francisco, but at the same time Lance found it hard to catch his breath from all the excitement. It was like he was stuck in a higher altitude and couldn’t come down.

“Can I take a picture of you as the train’s coming?” he asked Lotor, who shrugged and stood subject to the photograph. Even from the other end of the yellow line, they caught the gust of air that buffeted Lotor’s braids forward, caught in the motion of flinging back over his shoulders. _Hunk’s gonna have a hernia when he sees these pictures_ , Lance thought, flicking through them with Lotor leaning in beside him to see.

“Are you studying photography?” he asked Lance.

“More or less. I haven’t decided yet,” he confessed, wincing a little. That certainly didn’t make him sound like a dedicated student. “But I mean, photography has always been a hobby of mine. So I’m leaning towards it.”

“Perhaps when we get back I can have one of my assistants give you a tour of our photography studios,” he suggested, and Lance damn near fainted on the spot just seconds before the doors hissed open on the train.

It was one of those slick bullet trains that Lance was convinced until now only existed in science fiction. It flew like a plane on land, and the interior looked a little too much like a plane for comfort. After spending eleven hours on the flight there, Lance was antsy and thankful that at least _some_ of his energy was exhausted swimming in the hotel pool. Lotor sat in the isle seat with his bodyguard beside him, and Lance claimed the seat across, focusing intently on Lotor’s soulmate line tangling with all the other passengers.

Lance wouldn’t have been so intent to stare had he not realized that at the speed they were traveling, they covered towns like feet covered pavement. The passenger’s soulmate lines, if local, would rapidly swing by faster than Lance ever saw in San Diego. Every time he saw it he wanted to scream at them to hop off the train and find their partners, but he couldn’t speak the language and knew for a fact that people would think he’s insane.

Lotor noticed the distress on Lance’s face as he watched another string cross through his body and into the passing town. “What is it?” he asked.

“We’re passing a bunch of towns where peoples’ soulmates are,” he explained, feeling the pressure of the train slowing down to the next stop.

“How can you tell?”

“All their lines are intersecting and moving when we pass populated towns,” he said. “Some of them have turned silver at the stops.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means they’re _incredibly_ close to their soulmates. The… um, the length of the radius differs so there’s no sure-fire way to say ‘Oh, your soulmate will arrive in two hundred feet,’ it just doesn’t work like that,” Lance said, rubbing a hand across his forehead. “So far I haven’t _not_ told people that their soulmate is close. The first couple I paired up in college just _happened_ to be crossing paths at the time I tuned in to the threads.”

“And that was Acxa and Ezor.”

“Right.”

Lance was only partially focusing on Lotor’s face, and mostly adjusted on thread slowly starting to shift with the train tracks. “We’re getting closer,” Lance said. It didn’t move all that much—before, it was directly north of them, and now, it was rotating a fraction of an inch northeast.

Thankfully, Lotor was well-versed in the transportation, and so by the time they actually got off the train, they weren’t _completely_ lost. Lance felt like he was stuck in an ocean with no flotation device aside from Lotor, who stood before a the map of the city rubbing a hand over his chin and conversing with his bodyguard. Lance stood off to the side, cradling his camera to his chest as he watched people board the train, and people leave the station.

He took another picture of the station, and the city map before Lotor swung around, clasping his hands together. “All right! So, for the sake of saving our feet from ultimate pain and suffering, we’ll just have to use the bus system. And hop off whenever we see fit.”

“O-Okay,” Lance stammered, already anxious over using mass transport in a foreign country.

Thankfully, though, the bus wasn’t terribly busy. Lotor’s bodyguard carried Lotor’s duffle around wherever they went, and didn’t complain when he had to stand on the bus to provide a seat for a woman who hopped on. Whenever Lance looked at him, he already seemed to be watching Lance, so he turned his attention out the window to follow Lotor’s line wherever it took them next.

They started to circle the epicenter when the bus took a turn through downtown. They got off at the next stop to follow the line as they circled the block together, underneath the neon lights and the afternoon traffic. Lance couldn’t read a single goddamn thing, but he’d recognize a marquee sign anywhere. “They’re in there,” he said, pointing to it.

Lotor squinted up at the sign and said, “It looks like a theatre. There’s a matinée ballet performance at noon. I’ll ask someone about it—wait for me.”

He went inside, leaving Lance with the mostly-mute bodyguard on the busy streets of whatever city they landed in. Lance studied the storefronts, and the soulmate lines cutting here and there and zigzagging across the streets and through the stories above them. When Lotor came out ten minutes later, it was with three tickets, and a hand ushering them inside.

They had to check in their bags, so Lance secured his camera inside his backpack, cushioning it with his clothes before passing it across the countertop. Despite the fact that Lance surely wouldn’t know anyone there, he still felt embarrassed to be so poorly underdressed for the event, so he kept his jacket zipped up until they found their seats among a flurry of other spectators.

“Are they in the crowd?” he asked Lance, who had already checked. He shook his head. “What about the ushers?”

“No, they’re working backstage,” he said, watching the thread pass them, concealed behind the curtain. “Your thread is pink now.”

“What does that mean?”

“It’s transitioning to silver. We’re too far back for it to be completely silver, though,” he said, feeling Lotor shift closer.

Lotor leaned over the armrest to read the program to Lance, pausing to figure out what it said. “Reading in other languages has always been a struggle for me,” he confessed with a sigh. “I’m far better at speaking it and listening.”

“You’re _far_ better at languages than me, that’s for sure. The only reason I’m fluent in Spanish is because my family speaks it at home,” he confessed.

“That’s still incredibly impressive. Give yourself some credit,” Lotor said.

When the lights dimmed, lightened, and dimmed again, the time warning provided them another few minutes before the actual performance to read through the cast list. Discretely, Lance looked up the theatre and its website, which brought them to a better understanding of the performance itself when Lotor read it as best he could.

“Every performance I’ve been to in Japan has been damn near perfect,” Lotor said. “The performers are _incredibly_ dedicated.”

“Do you go to ballets a lot?” he asked, and raised an eyebrow when Lotor nodded his head.

“Believe it or not, but I was a ballet protégé back when I was in primary school—elementary school, where you’re from,” he whispered, and Lance snorted, giggling as Lotor flicked him on the arm, biting back a laugh. “I looked _good_ in tights.”

“Oh my God—” Lance started, and was shushed by the man beside him as the lights dimmed finally.

He turned his phone off and away in his pocket as the performance started. The curtains drew back, and the scene unfolded. They had props and everything leaning over the group of dancers collapsed on the floor, rising from their dormant states, and lifting with the orchestra framing the stage. Lance was nearly too distracted to recall the reason why they were there.

He focused his vision once more, and tracked it offstage, ignoring the flood of other lines creating an intricate web through the crowd. Lotor looked to him, and Lance shook his head a minute before the music lulled, and the thread began to move—

A woman strode onto the stage, timidly, guided by the had by a gentlemen who faded behind, following after her to the center. Lance tapped Lotor’s arm, catching not only his attention, but also the bodyguard. He pointed to her. “It’s the woman there,” he whispered.

He could feel the excitement in the air as people watched her dance. The orchestra rose with vigor, and her solo part sent her from on end of the stage to the other, the dancers moving around her like ripples in a pond, radiating with the pressure of her forceful grace. Her hair was in a dome of black braids, face white with makeup, eyes light with every flitting glance she passed over the crowd.

They watched her in awe as the dancers pulled her to and fro before she merged among them for a massive sequence of skirts tossing up in waves across the stage. Lance had never seen a ballet before, and watched it through the filter of his soulmate lens, observing the crosshatching of threads flitting between the dancers and around the theatre.

By the end of the performance, Lance’s butt was numb (nothing new there), and Lotor looked like he was about ready to lunge onto the stage himself, straight through the curtains and into the muscular arms of whoever that ballet dancer was. “I wouldn’t even know how you contact the dancers,” Lance confessed.

“I’ll find a way. Let’s go,” he said, already hurrying to the exit doors.

They searched for the stage door, and Lotor asked one of the workers at the theatre where to find it. He got caught in a short conversation with the man he asked, which delayed their arrival at stage door. There were several people waiting around for the performers, and after having scoured the program, they knew exactly which name they were looking for… and more than just a few people were talking about her.

“She must be famous,” Lance commented after hearing her name mentioned again. “Look her up?”

Lotor did, fingers over his lips as he read an article through. “It’s titled ‘Japan’s Outstanding Blind Ballerina,’” he said. “Oh my God—”

The stage door opened, and several of the dancers stepped out, theatrically bowing to them as Lance was startled by the shrill, excited way the crowd greeted them. Lance searched frantically for the silver end of Lotor’s thread, but it lingered back behind the door, even after the majority of the dancers greeted and dismissed themselves from the crowd after signing books. They waited around for a while longer while Lance tracked the thread where it shifted around inside, and by the time Lance returned to reality, a handful of the crowd began to disperse, and soon it was just the three of them.

The guard at the stage door wandered up and said something, to which Lotor responded with, “Oh, um, we’re just waiting for Narti.”

The man said something, and Lance looked to Lotor. “What did he say?” he asked.

“She’s not coming out today. Apparently she doesn’t use stage door all that often,” he said. “I wouldn’t blame her.”

“Tell him about the Soulmate Line,” Lance suggested.

“He wouldn’t believe that. We’d just sound like stalkers then,” Lotor sighed, and turned back to the guard to respond. He said it with sincerity, worried eyebrows pressing in. The guard narrowed his eyes skeptically before raising a hand and moving back to the stage door. He left inside. “I think he’s going to try and convince her to come out,” he said.

Lance was made aware of the few dedicated stragglers lingering around on the sidewalk, resistant to leave immediately after the rest of the crowd. When the door opened again, those remaining individuals pulled forward, and crowded in front of Lance, speaking fast and drawing the dancer’s attention to them as she held onto a collapsible stick. Her hair was still in braids, her makeup gone—not having expected to come out of stage door to begin with.

Her pale blue eyes were half-lidded as she addressed some of the crowd members. Lance looked at Lotor, who tucked his hands beneath his chin and waited. The stage door guard spoke low to Narti as the audience members ran off with their signatures, high-pitched voices retreating around the corner.

“Narti,” Lotor said as the guard followed her over. There was another woman with her, trailing behind by the door in her tailored suit and high heels.

Lance was grinning like an idiot when Narti spoke to Lotor, who introduced himself and Lance. He tried his best to follow along until Lotor was straining for words and looked to Lance. “The Soulmate Line—what else could you call it?” he asked.

“The Red Thread of Fate?” he suggested, having done plenty of research on it before. Lotor translated it as best he could, and the effect was almost immediate. Her half-lidded eyes widened, and the words came out fast before she held her hand up to Lotor, nearly brushing his chest in the process. He gave her his hand, and she clasped onto the pinkie.

“She says… that in Japan the Red Thread is often described as being tied around the pinkie,” he explained, talking along with her as they both added, “She knows about it. Apparently it’s a fairly common legend.”

She took her hand back as he spoke to her again, and then to the woman who approached them. She looked skeptical until Lotor pulled up Lance’s website for her. She looked between Lance and the phone before speaking directly to Narti, translating one of the articles for her. She stood and listened intently, her eyes focusing around Lotor’s chest before she turned to her companion and thanked her.

Lance watched for Lotor’s expression to change, and was delighted to find that he was smiling as Narti talked, and was eager in responding. He wrote down something in his phone before saying, “She’s walking to a café around the corner, so we’ll be joining her to talk about what brought us here.”

“Really? That’s great!” Lance blurted out, and Lotor laughed as he put his phone away and lead the walk away from stage door, and with Narti beside him. Her friend guided her so she didn’t have to use her cane as they listened to Lotor talk and describe Lance’s situation from everything he compiled during the eleven hour flight to now. He talked about San Francisco and _Empire_ , from which Narti’s friend gathered references from the internet to solidify his story. Lance beamed up at Lotor’s guard, who broke his facade to offer a grin.

  


  


Lance left the day after from Tokyo. Lotor’s guard gave him the phone number of Lotor’s assistant who organized his flights, and with Lotor off befriending Narti, they still managed to leave off a hug at the airport. Lance was startled at the sudden embrace, but his brain was screeching, _A multimillionaire is hugging you, HUG HIM BACK_.

“I’ll call you sometime soon about that article,” he said. “My assistant is going to pick you up from the airport for a photoshoot—don’t worry about outfits because she’s already got it covered. You’ll get a tour of the studio as well.”

“Thank you so much—”

“Don’t even mention it. You’ve done incredibly well—better than I anticipated,” he insisted, and as Lance turned to a blushing mess, Lotor sent him off with yet another hug, and a wave from the guard.

Stuck without a feasible means of wifi or service, Lance was stranded socially for eleven hours, which he spent mostly unconscious. At San Francisco, his phone was suddenly swamped by messages, emails, phone calls, and notifications, and he happened to be getting call from Keith the exact moment he stepped off the gate threshold and emerged free as a bird on the other side.

“Hello?”

“ _You’re back!_ ”

“Yeah, oh my God, did you time my landing or something?”

“ _Maybe. But you failed to mention when you’re coming back. You don’t exactly have a whole lot of time at this point—_ ”

“Yeah, tell me about it,” he huffed, already feeling the exhaustion setting in. He hoped whatever photoshoot this was had the ability to conceal the bags under his eyes. “I’ll call you back, though, ‘cause I’ve gotta meet up with someone I don’t even know.”

“ _Oh, right. Sorry for distracting you_.”

“You can distract me _any time_ ,” he purred, and hung up just as Keith was saying, “Oh my _Lord—_ ”

Whatever the case, Lance found himself in the passenger’s seat of a vehicle heading for downtown San Francisco where they’d pull up alongside the _Empire_ headquarters in preparation for showing Lance around. He was almost too exhausted to function, let alone process the experience until he was already back in San Diego looking at an email from Lotor’s assistant filled of photos he didn’t remember taking, or even _posing_ in. Were those even _his clothes?_ Where the fuck was he?

“You mean to tell me you don’t remember _any_ of this happening?” Keith blurted out, and Lance shrugged uselessly. “Oh my God, Lance, look at your beautiful face in these though—”

“I was running on attempted sleep. Do you understand the difference between _actual_ sleep and _attempted_ sleep?” he whined. “My ass is still numb for sitting that whole time…”

“It’s been three days—”

“It’s been a _minute_ ,” he moaned. He could barely function in class, but it was starting to get better. Word spread fast, and so all of his professors seemed to learn one way or another that he spent the weekend flaunting around Japan with _Empire_ ’s co-founder, Alon Lotor. Honestly, he wouldn’t have been surprised if one of his professors gave him extra credit for the entire experience considering all the kickass photos that he took (and those he didn’t remember taking).

Lance felt guilty for not spending nights at his dorm with Hunk, but he suspected the big guy enjoyed a bit of time alone. Whenever he did stop by the dorms, he was riddled with hugs and cheek-kisses from Hunk bundling him up with affection that faded into exhaustion from midterms coming up in the next few weeks. They both needed time alone to study, even though much of Lance’s time was spent watching Keith study from the comfort of Keith’s bed in Keith’s apartment under Keith’s comfy blankets.

He _did_ notice a new bright yellow end table, though, which replaced the makeshift one Keith had before that was now posing as a coffee table in the living room. Lance pointed to it and said, “Is that… new?”

“Yeah,” Keith hummed, still skimming through Lance’s photographs from Japan.

“Where did… you get it?” Keith snickered, and Lance moaned, “You got it from the dumpster, didn’t you?”

“You better fucking believe I did.”

“Oh my _God—_ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's definitely more plot to this but I seriously need to take a writing break. But I left little hints for a future reveal where Keith feels comfortable telling Lance that he's actually dyslexic hence his hatred of texting (he feels anxious sending texts and having to proofread them a zillion times in fear of typos). 
> 
> You can find me on [Tumblr](http://girlskylark.tumblr.com/)! [ Here's a survey so y'all can influence my future writing :D](https://girlskylark.typeform.com/to/zkiD8u)

**Author's Note:**

> I have this plotted for an entire fic but I'm working on a few other things at the moment, so this is going on the back burner as a oneshot until I have motivation XD


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